mamacate

Twisting!

Twisting was a blast.  What a great time!  This was the first year of the Fiber Twist, and I confess I was tempted to warn people that it might be a bit sparsely attended, both by vendors and buyers.  I wasn't sure it would have the energy of a bigger show.  Boy, was I wrong.  The Grange, where most of the vendors were, was positively buzzing with energy.  I got there near the end of the day and it was crowded, the vendors were all looking burnt out in the way a busy day of working a festival will get you, and there was clearly a wool high permeating the place.

I saw Dharia first off, then in quick succession saw Helen, Deanna, and Kathy.  I delivered Kathy to Sheila Bosworth for a spinning lesson, and a tired Sheila was an excellent sport and got Kathy spinning in no time.  Kathy showed shocking restraint (this could have to do with the fact that I didn't take no for an answer) and is deferring the purchase of a spindle.  I don't think she'll resist for long.  I bought a lovely batt of angora/wool in "night sky" from Helen with the last of my cash money, planning for a wimple.  I think modern folk call this a "smoke ring," but I figure if you can wear something and call it a WIMPLE for gawdsake, why wouldn't you?

After the Grange it was off to the Pint for beer with bloggers--one of my favorite things.  Dena, Amysue, her blogless friend Mary, and Kat all arrived in short order, and we had a grand time eating, drinking, and talking politics and wool.  I gotta tell you, good beer, good political ranting, and wool are about my favorite combination.  Oh yes, there was chocolate for dessert.  I'm just saying.  Thanks to everyone who made it out, and those who didn't, we missed you.

But you may be wondering why I only had enough cash for one batt by the time I got to the Grange.  (Okay, you're probably not, but I'll tell you anyway.)  Blame Barb at Foxfire Fibers.  Really, entirely her fault.

The Twist was a two-part (two-ply?) event, with a market at the Grange and then farm tours throughout Franklin County.  Because of child and house responsibilities, I didn't get to most of the farms, but I couldn't miss a trip to Barb's place.  She has a gorgeous view up in the hills near Shelburne Falls.

But the fiber, oh the fiber.  First of all, I was forced, forced I tell you, to buy cashmere/silk roving beautifully dyed by Barb.  I can photograph it, but I can't possibly communicate the softness of this stuff.  Here's the sad facsimilie.  But truly, you have to feel it to understand.

To go with this, I had to buy a coordinating batt of wool.  These are going to be gloves.  I have a light blue coat (I know, so 2004), so these will coordinate nicely.  I don't know if you can see it in the wool batt, but aside from being prepared beautifully (like air, I tell you!), she's carded in just the right amount of angelina.  The name of this colorway is "Ice Pond" and it is truly shimmering.

Despite having fifty other projects going, I went ahead and started this.  I mean, gloves, right?  It's like socks.  It doesn't count.

Finally, I grafted those Kepler cables (damnit), and nobody got killed, so that's a good thing.  Here's the picture.  Next, to pick up and knit the body before I tackle the wrist cables.  Less cabling, but the exact same amount of grafting again.  Times two.  Oy and also vey.  For some reason I'm procrastinating picking up the body stitches.  Don't know why.  I suppose it's all that fabulous wool calling me from various corners of the house.

Speaking of which, I saw Deanna (sadly, blogless) at the Twist, and she gave me some wool.  You see, there was a little mishap in the mad wool tent at Rhinebeck.  Somebody had a change of heart and left behind a CVM fleece,  Deanna hadn't found anything that rocked her world, then she was short a little cash, I had a twenty readily accessible, and I requested to be paid in wool.  So those pictures you may have seen on a blog or two of me carrying around two big bags of wool?  Yeah, it actually *was* worse than even that.  So anyway, you know, CVM, good stuff, I washed some of it up yesterday (the bulk fleece washing method is actually going quite well, in case you were wondering).  Here's a peek--washed but uncombed, and poised next to a seasonally-appropriate prop.  I have too much gray wool right now, but this is going to be some really, really nice stuff to comb.  And spin.  And knit. 

Halloween has been exhausting, with an intense and sad family gathering (extended family, all is well chez mama) and then rushing home to trick-or-treat.  Henry was a ghost (complete with bang-clank equipment inspired by Gus the Ghost), and Eleanor was a truck.  Mama Rhys has proven herself the queen of home made halloween costumes, which is good because for all my fiber craftiness, I suck at that.  The kids had an absolute blast and can I just tell you that listening to Henry go up to everyone at the Rag Shag and say "Happy Halloween, I'm a ghost, whoooooooOOOOOooooooOOOOO," and seeing Eleanor bouncing around with her flashing tail light and cardboard bucket loader going "RrrrrmmmmmMMMMRRRRmmmmmRRRRMmmm" just slayed me.  Hopefully I got a decent picture.  Too late to look now though.

Rhys leaves for the next leg of her tour of America's accounting offices tomorrow.  Luckily this time MIL will be coming to help for one, maybe two nights, so I have some chance of, you know, surviving.  For a few days at least.  See you on the other side.

Fait Accompli

I'm a little worried about the neon factor, but yeah, it's the one that is calling me.  Thanks for weighing in.

Just a note that Steph is making this, and she also had the gall to link to another Hanne kit that rocks my world.  Who is enabling whom, I ask you?

I suppose queuing projects without actually purchasing them could be called progress, no?  Okay, whatever.

Kepler is mostly in a circle now by means of evil cable grafting, and I have not been committed to an insane asylum, nor have I chopped the thing up with preschool scissors, despite significant provocation.  Things are looking up.

Thoughts from an Older Lesbian

So thanks, guys, for being shocked at my being dubbed an "Older Lesbian."  Mafia has it right when she points out that you get old VERY young when you work at a college.  I was actually given this title at the ripe old age of 29.  I had a student worker, a very smart, very cool person who may by now be approaching the age of 29 herself.  She has a blog, though she doesn't update it very often (HINT HINT).  Anyway, I fancied myself a bit of a mentor, and was giving her some probably questionable advice, when she said to me "it's nice to have an older lesbian to talk to about this stuff."  And I'm all looking around behind me for a heavyset woman with a flannel shirt on (when I was a "younger lesbian" that's what the "older lesbians" looked like).  But she wasn't there.  And she was referring to ME!

I had actually gotten used to this whole Older thing even before that.  At 25 I was vp of a small marketing research firm.  Being in this college town, we had a great labor pool, because we could hire the people with the bright pink mohawks and the sixteen lip piercings and put them on the phone interviewing doctors and no one would be the wiser.  But I had to meet with the doctors and the marketing types, so I was all pantyhose and shit (see how old I am?  I was working before "business casual" was the norm.  Yes, pantyhose were required.), and so I was THE MAN at 25.  Even so, being an Older Lesbian at 29 was a bit of a shock.  Now, at 35 (36 NEXT MONTH, WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?), my Older-ness is undeniable, at least in the context of a traditional college.  Plus now as a Lesbian Mom (TM), well, I'm a role model.

Be very afraid.

ANYWAY.

Can someone please stop me from buying this?

Or, you know, possibly this?

Or, more practically for everyday and work wear, this?

 

I saw this jacket in the Woodland Woolworks catalog a month or two ago, but I nearly had a heart attack at the price and decided it was far too rich for my blood.  Wendy has just started one, which got me googling, and of course it's cheaper on ebay.  I'm not a big fan of kits, but this is a nice enough pattern that I think it might be worth giving up on any shred of creativity and just buying the damn thing and knitting it exactly as instructed.

So let's not pretend that I'm not buying this thing (hey, I'm finishing UFOs right now, and at least for the moment the many jobs are paying actual money, and let's not talk about all the wool in the closet, shall we?).  So do I get the red one and then make another, more conservative one with my own damn yarn?  Or do I make the nice calm gray one?  Opinions?  Discussion?  Yes?

Twisters, the current plan is to have a beer after the fest--People's Pint at 4 pm.  We can survey the damage admire our acquisitions then.  I may take the kids to a farm in the morning (after emailing people that Tregellys is way the hell out there, I may take the kids there in the morning, then go solo to the Grange in the afternoon).  The plans are still a bit up in the air, but anyway, I'll be at the Pint at 4.

See you there.

Random, briefly

You know how you have a big challenge, like, say, your partner going away for a week and leaving you alone with the kids and your 45 jobs and your messy house and you get through it and you breathe this big sigh of relief and you think "hey, I did it, time to rest!" but then life keeps going at breakneck speed and you crash but life doesn't stop and you wind up way more behind and tired the week after she's gone then you did the week she was here?  No?  Well, I do.  Did I mention she's gone next week too?  Love the job of the partner.  Oh yessiree.  I'm reminding myself that if all goes according to plan, things will be very different next year.

So, I was saying,

• Kepler is in time out.  We've pretty much straightened out the behavior that got her there, but she's going to have to spend a little time alone for the moment.  You know, I knew that picking out a couple of rows of stitches from a provisional cast-on was going to be a PITA, but I hadn't taken the cables into consideration.  Freakin hell. Now I have to graft the cables, and again, not a big fan of the lovely kitchener stitch under the best of circumstances (thank you PGR for the no-sewing-needle socks, oh thank you) and now the whole grafting cables thing is just going to make my head hurt.  I figure I can do it.  People like Claudia and Stephanie have made sport of flashing their invisible grafting jobs before and I will do my very best, but not before I pretend it doesn't exist for a while.  Because grafting cables together feels way too much like work.  I should note, for the record, that the need to graft cables together is my own modification of the Kepler pattern and I should, for that reason alone, suck it up.  And I will.  But first I will pause to pout.
• Sick day today.  Everyone is coughing.  So it was that beloved place where the three-year-olds were sick enough not to go to school, but not sick enough to just sit there.  And they're still finishing up the little renovation project, so there are whole areas of the house they can't touch.  Fun!
• The renovation has been pretty much true to murphy's law (no hardwood in the hallway, surprise electric in the walls, and a carpet remnant designated as an emergency solution to the hardwood in the hallway issue, that was just a teeny bit too small).  But the nice gay contractors are very friendly, neat, and conscientious, and the newly opened-up doorway looks awesome.  We've traded in a stained carpet for stained flooring (which, it turns out, is actually hardwood veneer, which I didn't even realize existed), but some rug-like thing will cover that up (perhaps not an ebay oriental, since Juno invoked the M-O-T-H word).  So yeah, happy about that.
• I don't know why I'm embarrassed to admit this, but instead of knitting Kepler I'm finishing up my second Klaralund, that has been sitting, just under half-done in UFO-land for no reason other than I have been too excited by other projects to work on it.  I know a lot of people hated their Klaralunds, but I wear mine all the time.  It's like my sweatshirt sweater.  So comfy.  And I want another one.  So this one is in kureyon, the colors rock my world (shades of rust-red) and there is no knitting more mindless.  So, whatever, mock me, I can take it.
• My secret pal just got her package and she is over the moon.  I parted with some yarn I got for me because I thought she'd like it, and I was right.  Nothing like making somebody happy with wool.  I tell ya.
• Jody of Raising WEG sent me to an excellent time suck web site today.  It feels strangely intimate to link to this list, which is odd because I think nothing of telling you people of my weird hormonal problems, but I like the idea of a book catalog site and recommendation engine that isn't, well, Amazon.  There's even a blog thing for the sidebar if I ever get around to adding it.
• The grad student I work with at one of my jobs (hi M!) recommended the show TransGeneration to me.  It's freakin' fascinating.  I have to confess to being a bit of a fuddy duddy (or as one of my student workers once called me, an Older Lesbian), and being somewhat clueless about the whole trans phenomenon.  I've also been concerned about young kids making really permanent and serious life decisions (surgery) when they are still in the process of forming their identity.  But this show has taught me a lot, and really given me some insight.  It's on Sundance, and seriously, it's worth seeking out if you get that station.  M had to urge me to watch it, and man, was he right.

Well, I kept falling asleep today (note: the kids did not do the same, naptime was successful only for me, briefly, of course), so I suppose I should try to actually sleep tonight.  I find it does wonders for my general attitude.  Go figure.

See you at the Fiber Twist (and if my living room is not still in pieces, I'll be in touch with those who have let me know they'll be around).

Random Saturday (Now on Sunday!), or, Phew!

I made it.  The week of solo parenting is over, Rhys is home and being run ragged by short people, and I actually got to sleep until 9 (NINE) am this morning.  It's a freakin' miracle.

I thought I had done so very well.  I was all, "this isn't so bad, I can do this," which is good because this is the first of quite a few trips over the next few weeks, and this is not the only one that will last a week.  I had done laundry.  The kitchen was pretty much under control.  The children were fed, bathed, and brushed, and had even suddenly improved their bedtime behavior significantly.  I met my work deadlines, picked the kids up from school on time (let's not talk too much about when I dropped them off) and even invoiced for some freelance work.  I blogged.  I answered email.  Hey, I did some bulk fleece washing.  I called a contractor.  (More on that later.)  I was a mommy-management-maniac.  I rocked.

Thing is, I'm not exactly the best with the phone.  I'm not afraid of it, it's just not my favorite form of communication.  And I hate listening to voice mail when I'm solo with the kids because it's always too late to call people back, and then I have to remember the next day, and have the number at work, and yadda yadda yadda.

Yeah, I forgot to listen to voice mail.  All freakin week.  I didn't even listen to voice mail when we got back from Rhinebeck, and then I didn't listen to it all week, and, well, um, whoops.  It could have been much worse--the worst was that my parents wanted to meet us at Rhinebeck (though I think it wouldn't have worked out anyway), and that my hairdresser wanted to reschedule.  I feel terrible about the hairdresser, but I have called her and apologized profusely, and we will be rescheduling and hopefully it's all okay.

But, yeah, maybe my supermom routine needs a little work.

Anyway, I survived.  Thanks to everyone who was expressed concern about me last week.  Don't worry, I won't be giving away all my wool, I just needed to step back for a minute and remember that wool is the part of my life that I need to protect a little, and hold separate from all the craziness.  And I think I need to channel Margene and really enjoy the process and not think too much about the product.  In the end, that's where the high comes from, at least for me.

But yes, this is Random Wednesday (now, randomly, written on Saturday! Posted on Sunday!), so, without further ado:

·       So I'm knitting along on Kepler, and I gotta tell you that if you're dissatisfied with your waist measurement to begin with, knitting a cabled band that goes around it is not a particularly good way to improve your attitude.  It's going agonizingly slowly, and I have to tell you that I am shocked at how much fabric it takes to circumnavigate my gut.  I'm two thirds of the way around now.  I'm enjoying the cable, and i know when I get to the stockinette part I won't believe how fast it goes, but man, there's a lot of me to go around.

·       Also that baby shower is tomorrow, and the evil crocheted hat proceeds with infinite slowness.  It should be done, however, I will now share with you exactly how stupid I really am.  The pattern, in my defense, is not exactly clear.  It says "work until piece measures 14"."  And I'm like, huh, that's a big hat.  Because I'm thinking diameter, not circumference.  Which I know is idiotic, and you know, the worst part is that I crocheted away (in single crochet), knowing the hat was going to be huge but thinking that there was some weird crochet construction thing going on that I didn't understand.  In my defense, I didn't actually get to 14" before I came to my senses.  I probably ripped back 10 rounds, and the hat will be a little on the big side but I prefer big to small.  But I'm still crocheting my little heart out.  And I'm not particularly pleased about it.

·       I haven't yet used my combs because I don't have a good place to clamp them.  I did rough comb a little of the silver romney, but it's a little too short and soft for English combing, so I decided to try to drum card it.  I really do have to say that I love my drum carder and I'm so grateful to Sara for getting it for me.  I spun a sample of it last night.  I don't know what it wants to be yet, but I'm going to wait a bit and I bet it will tell me.  Partly I think it's competing with Motley for the role of "gray cabled sweater du jour" and I'm not starting another one until I finish Kepler.  But at least I have some sense of this wool's plans for me.  And that makes me feel better.  It might find its way into a cabled hat or two before then.  We have made peace.

·       So, Rhinebeck.  I've been feeling vaguely guilty about the whole blogging Rhinebeck thing all week.  First of all, I think I'm incapable of writing a post that will do justice to the experience, and second of all, so many people have been so creative, so descriptive, so thorough, that I am going to take the totally easy way out and refer you to them.  Specifically:

• Cassie has the most thorough and excellent link-fest and has been her usual conscientious and thoughtful self in describing a wonderful weekend.  It's an act I couldn't begin to try to follow. (Also, dude, happy blogiversary!)

• Juno did a wonderful job of explaining the fibery fabulousity of the whole thing.  I barely saw either of them when I was there, but, you know, what they said.

• Laurie explains it all in three parts, and again with someone I didn’t see enough of, I can say “what she said.”

• Jo and Justine were kind enough to stay in our cramped room and eat pizza while a blogger party raged in the lobby, as Sara and I were beholden to short people sleeping.  We sent the non-fibery spouses out for payment for daytime babysitting dinner and they came back and collected Justine’s partner Patrick, whose presence next year is apparently the deal-closer for our kid-chasing posse next year.  Apparently he entertained mightily, and without even telling the story about the time he was a pirate.  A very good time, but I regret not having two more days—the weekend was too short and I felt like my interactions with people who feel like good friends—were too fleeting.  Any chance they’ll make it into a week-long festival?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.

• Finally, and incomparably, Katy has set the weekend to the music of the ‘80s.  What more can really be said, given the existence of such a feat?  I ask you.

• Oh, Secret Pal!  I’ve been meaning to say thank you to my incredibly sweet Secret Pal who sent an absolutely adorable “Knitter Bear,” a teddy bear with knitting needles and yarn and all.  The kids think it’s the coolest thing ever, and they also loved the maple syrup lollipops.  I’m telling you, this Secret Pal thing is working out pretty well for them.  I did steal back the fabulous felted mini-bag my SP5, Isela, made for me, and it now protects my camera from the elements.

• So remember I mentioned calling a contractor?  Yeah, because I definitely don’t have enough going on, but I’ve reached the point with the living room carpet that I can’t stand to be in the room with it anymore.  We’ve had it cleaned a hundred times, but it’s well past any real hope.  We’re also planning an addition on the house, so we don’t want to do any major work that will be undone when we, I don’t know, knock down, in whole or in part, three of the four walls in the room.  But there’s this weird little hallway and this TINY doorway to the living room that makes the whole space seem cramped, so tomorrow, and by that I mean the day after today, as in Monday, the contractors are coming bright and early to widen the doorway and rip up the carpet.  So I’ve spent the weekend packing up bookshelves and throwing away clutter (and oh but there is clutter) so that they can actually get to the carpet.  The hardwood underneath needs refinishing, but I figure a cheap used oriental rug on ebay and, hey, I might even be able to stand being in my own house.  It’s been a lot of work, but I’m really relieved to know we’re getting rid of this health hazard on my living room floor.

• So, depending on how this whole construction, destruction, etc. thing goes, I may actually be willing to allow non-family members into my home in the near future.  Woot!  On that note, if you are planning to head to the Fiber Twist next weekend (a new, small, but bound-to-be-great festival about 20 miles from me), let me know.  If the place is somewhat put back together, I might be having coffee…or beer…at some point during the day.  Cajz, of course, but like I said, let me know if you’re coming this-a-way.

So I’m finishing this post on Sunday, having just returned from the baby shower at which I gifted the hat.  I forgot to photograph it before giving it, but I see the recipient every week and I’ll ask her to bring it so I can take a picture.  It’s a crocheted brown hat (DB baby cashmerino) with a stem at the top, and two little crocheted oak leaves hanging from the stem.  The oak leaves are handspun from a lovely autumn colorway in merino-tencel from The Sheep Shed.  I was a little worried that people would look at the oak leaves and say “why did she put these weird lizards on the hat?” but people do seem to have gotten the whole acorn idea.  The recipient cried.  I mean the mom, the baby hasn’t started crying yet, but I fully expect him to cry when he wears it.  Anyway, it’s always fun to make hormonally vulnerable women bawl their eyes out.  Good times.

Hi, My Name is Cate and I'm a Woolaholic.

This is the first step.  I'm not saying I'm going into wool recovery or anything, but I am accepting that my addiction has made life unmanageable.  It may have something to do with the sudden disappearance of the many codependent forces in my life.  My partner on a week-long business trip.  Wendy, who (attempts to) clean our house, going away to Hawaii for three weeks.  The confluence of a relatively healthy bank account and two fiber festivals in as many weeks and a moth attack on one Rubbermaid container that made me think I didn't have enough wool.  A cold that won't go away.  Suddenly the wool that is coming out of every corner of my tiny house seems, well, slightly insane.  Unreasonable.  Out of control?

I washed a three-pound silver Romney fleece yesterday.  I've had a problem drying fleece; it sits outside for days, getting dewy every morning, and never completely drying on my incredibly shady property (we can grow little besides moss and hostas; satellite views of our house show only treetops).  So I had this idea of putting it in a huge mesh bag, washing it in the bathtub, and then drying it, in the bag, perched on a sweater rack in my dryer.

My bulk fleece-washing method.

It got a little felted.  Not completely, and not at all beyond repair, but not what I was going for.  Must retool.  I actually checked it before it went into the dryer, and it turns out the dryer wasn't the problem--I think it might have been the washing in the bag.  Perhaps loose in the tub is the answer.  Anyway, advice is welcome.  But my point, and I do have one, is that I think I have lost the plot here with this idea of bulk fleece washing.

I say this because I sat back yesterday and thought to myself, "self, what the fuck are you on about?"  I mean, BULK?  FLEECE?  WASHING?  I have no illusions that I am going to chuck academic research for a career in production spinning, despite the deceptive appeal of the idea.  I can buy a lovely machine-spun, machine-knit sweater in any of a million places right now.  There is no room for bulk and fleece in the same sentence.  I should know better.

My fiber obsession, far from making me faster, more efficient, and more effective, has brought me to increasingly slower ways of creating things over the years.   

I started out spinning roving and then realized how much I like working with fleeces.  Drum carding?  Sure, but my Alvin Ramer combs arrived last night (Walnut.  Signed and Dated.  A treasure, to be sure.), and how much slower can you really get than hand-combing from raw fleece?  So in what way is bulk washing a part of this equation?

In my defense, I’m concerned about another moth attack, and I’ve sworn to myself that I will never again store unscoured wool.  But in this context, two and a half fleeces was probably a bad idea.  I did laundry, tons of it, yesterday, and I chased children and argued with pharmacists (Express Scripts=Evil), and cleaned the kitchen and then cooked in it and cleaned it again and bathed children and enforced cleanup and finally just did it myself.  My body didn’t really need the wool schlepping and the tub scrubbing that followed, but I did it anyway, and I recognize that that it’s not exactly fostering balance in my life.

But everywhere I look I’m faced with silver-gray Romneys and rare variegated Romeldales and impossibly beautiful Cormos from just beside the Mass. Pike and small musket Shetlands that mystically hold their history and heritage inside fiber and lanolin. And then there are things that other people have carded and dyed to utter perfection and the chance that I could card and dye to my own idea of perfection.  Mostly, there is the potential for lace shawls and cabled cardigan vests and scarves made of tiny silk leaves and that feeling I got when I finished Hyrna.  There’s just too much, too much to feed the imagination, had we but world enough, and time.

I am all big dreams and small progress, as I inch closer to the very sheep who started it all.  They say that acknowledging the problem is the first step toward change, but I’m not sure what change I need.  Wool is an antidote to the frenzy in my life, but I think I’m letting the frenzy get to the wool, and that’s what I need to fix.  Or maybe I’m just casting about for some wool that knows what it wants to be, looking for that perfect high.  If I keep spinning, if I keep washing and carding and combing and reading and poring over pattern books, maybe I’ll find it.  If I do, I'll let you know.

Promise.

(Random Wednesday will return on Thursday.  Or maybe Saturday.  I mean, random, right?)

Another "not really the Rhinebeck post"

So I'm just a day or so late on this but Rhinebeck was great, wool was purchased, wonderful friends were seen and online friendships were made (more) real.  The kids had a blast, and the partners were complete troopers.  We missed the big Saturday party because we sent the spouses out to eat and drink and form complete sentences (not an option during the day, when accompanied by four kids), but we had a lovely pizza party of parents and posse in our room (kids in the adjoining room) and it was simply wonderful.  Some enabling was done but I got feedback that I was not living up to my reputation.  Hmm.

This morning Rhys left on a jet plane for a week-long business trip.  Our housecleaner is in Hawaii on vacation (jealous?  me?), the laundry is shocking and so is the dog hair on the carpeted stairs.  I'm tired tonight, so I cleaned the kitchen and sat down to spin motley.  I'm trying to finish spinning for Kepler before I start on the Persimmon Tree roving I got to make a vest like Cassie's.  (Copycat?  Totally.)  The roving is being rather noisy though.

I expect to be scarce this week.  I forgot my camera on Saturday and was chasing kids on Sunday so pictures are pretty much nonexistent.  At some point I'll blog the spoils.  And you might see me holding a couple of bags of fleece on other blogs (apparently I caused great amusement).  I take the fifth.

PS: My involvement in Juno's acquisition of prizewinning CVM fleece is bound to be overstated.  I was an innocent bystander.

How I Knit in the 1980's (or, beat this oldest WIP)

There's this sweater, actually a vest, that I started knitting for my boyfriend.

Yup, you heard me.

Rhys and I have been a couple for nearly 14 years, I was dating women exclusively for a couple of years before that.  Before that I dated both men and women, and then in 1989 there was this hippie boy on an island in Maine who was just TOO high maintenance, and I gifted him my diaphragm and told him he could keep it.  I wouldn't be needing it anymore, I liked girls better anyway.  Actually, there was a high maintenance girl on that same island who had a very different fate with me.  Hmm.

ANYWAY, we were talking about knitting?

So based on the timeline above you can do the math and figure that if this is my boyfriend sweater, it is an old WIP.  Vintage 1988 to be exact.  A good year.

I stopped around the armpits, probably because the relationship was crumbling (coming out will do that sometimes--this was a really nice, low maintenance boyfriend, he just, well, wasn't a girlfriend).  Then, many years later, probably mid '90s, I picked it up again and finished the top.  The gauge was a bit off, I was knitting more tightly, and the top pulled in and the bottom flared out and it made me look fat and I put it in a corner.  I guess I didn't know about blocking then.  Or I didn't know how to do it right, and I didn't think I could salvage it.

So the kids pulled it out recently, and I looked at it, stretched it a bit, and realized, yeah, I can probably make this wearable.  Perhaps not flattering, but at least wearable.  And despite the whole boyfriend saga, the colorwork is one of the first things I designed myself, and it sure would be nice to appreciate it.  Here's how it looks now, loose dangly ends and all.

I knit it in the round, from an old Penny Straker pattern that I think was a worsted version of this.  Dig the backlight and thejacket thrown jauntily over her shoulder.  I have only the sketchiest memory of this, but I apparently wove in, or "caught" my floats every other stitch.  Entirely unecessary and it probably exacerbated the problem with the gauge up top, but it seems I was committed to the idea, and I have a vague sense that I felt virtuous about it.  Of course, I did float across rows for some reason, so it wasn't fastidiousness about the presence of floats at all.  Go figure. 

It's kind of neat to look back on 18-year-old me, and while shaking my head at some of the ways I made life complicated for myself, also thinking, hey, she chose nice 100% wool, and made up a pretty groovy color pattern on this thing.  And I'm proud of my 18-year-old self for being a knitter when it was just plain, well, odd.  Not really dorky, just peculiar.

So sometime soon I'll sit down with the yarn needle and weave in those ends, give it a nice bath, and lay it out, possibly pinned, at least up top, stretched down to lengthen and narrow it at the bottom, and we'll see what we can come up with.

Now, I'm sure that someone out there in blogland can do worse.  Anyone got 1986?  1987?  Not something completely doomed, but something that you're still planning to finish.  Just not....yet.  Julia has a good one, but I don't *think* it beats mine.

Let's make this interesting--sock yarn to the person with the oldest WIP.  Should we make Marcy ineligible?

I'm off...see you there if you'll be there too!

Rhinebeck

Saturday Chance Rain Hi 66°F

Saturday Night Chance Rain Lo 45°F

Sunday Chance Rain Hi 61°F

Seriously, this is better than the last two weeks.  And 30% is less than half.  Seriously, you're talking to a professional statistician here.  And not even so cold.  Shawl weather, perhaps?  Or maybe shawl over sweater.  Too much?  No such thing.

Say hi if you're there, I promise I'm over my meltdown (which, it turns out, seems to have been more about family income and health insurance anxiety and less about hormones--all seems to be well, at least with the former) and that I'm actually a pretty nice person.  Really.

Many healing thoughts to our friend who lost someone very dear yesterday.  It's too, too hard.

P! M! S!

You know, the name PMS is really quite inadequate.  I mean, it's already capitalized.  So, on the occasions when you need to emphasize the extreme nature of the condition, you've lost one of your most useful options for written emphasis.  PMS?  Doesn't really do it, does it?  PMS?  A little better, but still kind of reserved.  PMS just looks like you're linking to something.  PMS! looks vaguely perky and well, I'm so not.  Everyone knows that writing in ALL CAPS online is akin to screaming.

Right.  Screaming.  See the problem?

So, I'm resorting to the best solution I can come up with: P! M! S!  Damnit.  And thank goddess for a little something from Doc Norma.

Soothing herbs.  My family thanks you, Norma.  The booze base to the tincture doesn't hurt either.

I am profoundly cranky.  I'm sick with a cold that makes it so that I can't breathe without coughing.  My children are possessed by the devil (this may not actually be true, in fact, it's possible that it's me who's possessed by the devil, but I have P! M! S! so everyone else is wrong and I'm right, taking notes?  Yes?).  Pots are boiling over at not one but two jobs and yesterday was a holiday at preschool (happy Colonialism day in the U.S.A., oh, and Thanksgiving for my Canadian friends) but not at any of the jobs around here.  I'm trying to plan a weekend away (dogsitting, directions, etc.), keep up with email, and try not to look like a total slouch at both my jobs, while my kids are treated to me being a b-i-t-c-h and way more Noggin than I am really comfortable with. 

Even the knitting sucks.  I even decided to try crochet.  I read Stephanie's rant in her new book about how crochet is so fast people don't have time to reconsider bad decisions about making ugly objects, and I ran out to the store to get a pattern for some baby stuff for a rapidly-approaching shower, thinking "faster?  really?"  Dude, it's only faster if you don't suck at it.  I keep thinking I could knit this stinking hat faster and then crochet the cute little oak leaf on when I'm done.  It may well happen that way.

I have had a few moments of being a good-enough parent.  We made pumpkin bread from some pumpkins a friend gave to Henry & Eleanor.

She's saying PUMPKIN! for the camera.  Doesn't really work as well as cheese.  We used (modified, I'm like that with food too) a recipe from the fabulous Knitting Bloggers' Cookbook (put together by Elizabeth of My Favorite Things) that came, unexpectedly, in the mail on Saturday.

I also got a fabulous t-shirt from the Boston Knit-Out and Crochet 2005 from my, again, fabulous Secret Pal.  Thanks Secret Pal! So it's like I was at two of the four fiber events that happened on October 1 (the other two were Judith Mackenzie-McCuin at Nutmeg Spinners and a Spin and Knit-Out on the Amherst Common that hosted Grafton Fibers and Bay Colony Farm).  But had I not gone to Vermont I wouldn't be picking up HEN this weekend, I would not have gotten to see some very dear friends, and most importantly as far as my family is concerned, I would not have the Motherwort.

Everything is a bit worse because we have Big Life Changes going on that we are finally acting on, namely a possible change in DP's job situation that will hopefully make our lives more sane.  Further updates as events warrant, and specifics when I can.  But you know, this kind of stuff freaks the hell out of me, and with the cold and the hormones and the not being able to go to my jobs thing, it means SuperFreak.  I'll be glad to get the report on how tomorrow goes, though this whole thing will happen slowly, I know.

I think I'm going to count this as my Random Wednesday entry so that I don't have to stay up late tomorrow.  And I think I can say without question that it is sufficiently random.  And I don't really feel like creating a category for "Tuesday Tantrums," and I expect you don't want to read one every week either.  Though I'm certain I'm capable of producing them on that schedule.

Sweet dreams.  Or in my case, sweet lying in bed and coughing.