mamacate

Another Cummington

What a lovely time.  I've got so little of my brain to share with the internets these days, but I had another halcyon weekend in the Berkshires with old friends.  Somehow, even if you're a lame blogger like me, those friendships don't disappear.  I had a weekend of pick-up-where-you-left-off visiting, with lots of wool and wine, as it should be.  It's possible that the government of Spain may be increasing wine production in response to our consumption over the weekend, but that's okay because there's always next year.  When everyone left, the silence was deafening.  I need that kind of conversation every once in a while.  I've got plenty of souvenir wool to remember the weekend by.

This weekend was all kid-birthday-parties and laundry and combing of basement storage for purging and assiduous effort in pursuit of a large Indiana Jones lego set's completion.  I even cooked a pretty nice dinner tonight.

Life is hard but life is good.  I'll pop back in next time I can.

Keg Slackers

Knitters and spinners at a knitting and spinning party are a wonderful thing.  The prior post was composed during the blegger, but sadly, sprint data services do not extend to my neighborhood, and it has sat on the treo since Saturday night.

Lee Ann.  Happy birthday.  You were toasted.  So were we.

(photo credit to dear Laurie.)

My house was packed with wonderful friends--it's easy to forget, sometimes, about this community that is only tangible but a couple of times a year, and every time reconstituting itself in slightly different ways.  This year, in very approximate order of arrival, brought Claudia, Beth S., Debbie, Kathleen and Janet (from Team MHC, sadly blogless), Marcy, Deanna (also sadly blogless), Judy, Kathy, Lisa, Cheryl, Teresa, Manise (again with the bloglessness), Jess, Cynthia and her knitting Mister, Cece, Amanda, Laurie, Diane, Laura J., Dave, Theresa (blogless, I believe), Helen, Elisa, Kellee, Jackie, and the overnight crew of Kristen and Risa and her short people.  I live in abject terror that I've forgotten someone, which I probably have.  It's not you, it's my brain cells.  If your name was lost in a malfunctioning brain cell, email or comment and let me know.

Now really, don't you think a crowd like that could put a dent in a pony keg?  I mean, yes, Laurie did call tech support to inquire about unidentified mechanical parts on the keg ("we're the middle-aged knitters with the keg, can you tell us what that lever does?").  Yes, there were two women there in their third trimester.  Yes, some of us were so entranced by Laura J's brilliant homebrewed gingermead that we forgot about the keg, but people, we had rather a sad showing, I must say.  JoVE points out that this may be another of our many national faults, and if we would just do a better job of being convenient to Canada, we wouldn't have these problems.  She and Dr. Steph, in fact, have assured me that if I'd had a few Canadian knitters, I would not have to ask for help at the liquor store because the keg is still so damn heavy when I return it (damn).  I'm almost tempted to bring a keg to Rhinebeck just to see them prove their point.  But anyway, touche.  We knitters of the southlands, we are lightweights.  It is true.  I did my best, however, and again, the gingermead did NOT help me with the focus.

There was stash that was acquired.  I haven't taken stash pictures a lot lately, but what the heck?

This is a little bump of multi-colored naturally dyed wool, some little batts
(sparkly and not) from Sojourner Sheep (fiber people in my neighborhood--love it!), some merino-tencel sock yarn, and a lovely niddy.  Juno, see the sampling of the multicolored batt there on top of the niddy?  I spun that on your wheel.  It says hi.  Dave's worried it's getting a complex.  I almost brought it home to babysit it, but decided you might have other plans, and that Rhys might not believe that it's really someone else's.

Then there's some blue cotton (because I have a charka and like to prove to myself that I'm not very good at this, and there's nothing better to demonstrate same than trying to spin cotton on a charka).  Some dehaired llama in this lovely chocolate brown that is very nearly making me consider abandoning the Foxfire camel-silk I'm spinning, which is saying something.  There's some lovely tussah from Spunky Eclectic that looks just like irises spun up (you can see the sample, also spun on Juno's wheel, if you embiggen the picture), and a skein of alpaca yarn from an alpaca named Mr. who lives not too far away from here.

And that's about it.

Despite momentary llama-based temptation, I'm still in love with the Foxfire camel-silk.  I've been schooled in the ways of knitting lace with singles by Cheryl and Julia.  I'm still worried I'm going to end up being attacked by energized singles with a mind of their own, but I think I'm going to try it anyway.  Almost done with one 2-oz bag.  I did buy two, though.

My camera is in Colorado right now, but one appeared here and let me take a picture.  If you took this adorable picture of Elisa, and if you are missing a camera, shoot me an email.

A Few Details

I saw the kids off this morning.  Sniff, sniff.  I'm going to enjoy the free weekend, but coming as it did in between two business trips, it's tough to say goodbye.  Sigh.

I have been running on all cylinders since Sunday.  I can barely remember last week, in fact. 

Sunday was a big, intense meeting at church.  It all worked out for the best, at least in my view, but it was intense.  Then off to a work trip, and I was quoted in a trade publication on a controversial topic in between the rest of it.  Then this morning, we passed the milk truck on our way out of our street, and I dropped the family off at the airport at 6:30 am.  Today was the first day I took a bit of a breath.

So here I am, home sweet home.  And if you've emailed me about the blegger, I am under the impression that I have written back to you.  If I'm wrong, email me again at mama at mamacate dot com to tell me, because it's not you, it's me.  I do hope you can come.

Frequently asked questions include the following:

Q: What should I bring?
A: Wool.  You.  Friends.  Maybe a chair, but I'm hoping for the best with the sitting places.

Q: What time?
A: Sometime after the fest.  Like, five or sixish.  I'll try to leave a bit before things are winding down, so I should be here when you get here.

Q: Is your house pristine, uncluttered, and emblematic of good housekeeping and good taste?
A: Okay, no one has really asked this, but it's two days before I'm having people over and I'm realizing that if I stayed home from work and decluttered full time, there would still be no fooling you.  So the answer is no.

Q: Should I expect to come to a messy house that, despite having increased floor space and substantially expanded storage, remains as cluttered and messy as it was last year?
A: Why, what a good question.  Yes.

Q: Do you have any roving I can borrow?
A: I think that could be arranged.  But how are these things related?

Q: Should I eat dinner first?
A: There will be at least two giant pizzas and a keg.  Assuming someone thinks to bring chocolate, I figure we'll have covered all the major blegger food groups, so we should be all set.  If you decide to hit the Side Street Cafe on your way, well, I won't be mad.

Q: Have you finally gotten drapes or shades yet?
A: No.  But you'll be able to tell where the party is. (Minh asks this one constantly.  He'll appreciate that I've admitted publicly that as soon as the contractors went away we pretended we no longer had a to do list.)

PS: See you Saturday.

Wonderful Weekend

I'm going to try not to be a stranger, so here's a quick post to say that I went to New Hampshire, I had total camnesia, and I had a wonderful, warm, sunny, beautiful day, and it was sweet to come back to my wooly world.  It was almost like I hadn't been away.

I got to hold a leetle baby, see two in progress, hug my dear friends, and visit with a community that seems far-flung except when we're all together.

Marcy enabled brilliantly, and saw me through a migraine, witnessing my miraculous recovery at the hands of diet coke and bugles (don't ask me, caffeine, salt, and fat seem to be the answer--combined of course with aleve).  This is becoming a pattern.  I'm grateful.

New Hampshire, when it's not in full flood mode, is a wonderful festival.

Glad I made it.  Cummington is right around the corner. 

The Most Incredible Thing I Saw At Rhinebeck

So Rhinebeck is a pretty incredible experience.  There's wool, there's chocolate, there's fried artichoke hearts, there's Maine-grown cashmere.  It is a place of many wonders, at least for those of us afflicted in a certain way.  But there was this one thing I saw at Rhinebeck that trumps it all.  I wasn't the only one who saw it.  There are witnesses; photographic evidence, even.  This alone proves to me that it was real.

It was Jenni.

And her shawl.

(No, really, do you see how....diaphanous that thing is?  See it fluttering in the breeze?  See?  See?  I mean...)

I know, there's a lot of lace at Rhinebeck.  There were some amazing, impossibly talented lace knitters around those parts, but people, Jenni can make some lace.  And really, the most important part of Jenni's lace shawl?  That's the fact that Jenni spun this yarn herself.  Now I've spun me some lace shawls, but this?  This was a whole nother thing.  I'm telling you, frog hair would be insulting this yarn.  To call it even and perfect would be an act of ridiculous understatement.

It was just too beautiful for words.  There was genuflecting.  Seriously, you would have too.

And the scary part?  Girlfriend was in line for a *fleece*.  I can scarcely imagine what's next.

(ETA: Jenni has updated her blog with the story of the shawl as of 10/31 evening.  Can you believe she's not finished with it?  Wow.)

Small World

A couple of weeks ago, still reeling from the preschool thing, I went back and read some of my blog archives.  I was sort of going back, looking to see how it used to be, and what had changed, I suppose.  And it was striking: life is very different than it used to be, more than I think we've even acknowledged.  We're cramped, we're hemmed in, we're off-balance. 

So I talked to Rhys about it.  I told her I'd been reading my archives and that it seemed like our lives now were so...and there I was grasping for words.  She finished my sentence for me: "small," she said.  Small.  That's it.  Our lives have become very small.

And it's true.  We're living in a tiny space.  We have minimal child care, so we don't go out.  We go to work, we rush home, we shepherd people through rituals to bed, we watch TV, we discuss paint colors, we sleep.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  I suppose some of that is just grownup life, but it feels so very small right now.  Things could be oh so much worse--life is good in many ways--but right now, it's small.  Just that simple.  It has been a while that I've been living in tight quarters--I was ready to take a break and go somewhere a little bit bigger, if only for a very short time.  And Rhinebeck was it.

Rhinebeck is a big event for our small knitblog world.  I like the way Laurie thinks about it--our motley tribe gathering at market to ally and trade and stock winter stores.  I had 36 hours in which to participate.  It wasn't enough.  I was so starved for an outlet, a certain number of glasses of red wine caused me to burst into sudden tears and then to stay up until two hours before I had to get up and go home.  It wasn't smart.  But then again, I wouldn't have traded a single minute of it.  There were too many people I barely saw for a moment (more than I can link in a single clause); a few I got to spend good time with and a few I connected with, but there wasn't enough time with anyone. (I missed too many people with those links: forgive me.)

Sunday morning was Not Good as I sat woozily at the breakfast table and tried to make coffee and yogurt signal my body that it wasn't two hours past bedtime.  I was hopeless and useless and without a single prayer of any sort of adult functioning.  And suddenly, in contrast to, I don't know, most of my life, there were people around me who were taking care of me.  There was Marcy who was ready to drive me home on my schedule, even though she could have stayed.  There was Kristen who went and got the fleece out of her car and brought it to me so I didn't have to make more movements than were absolutely necessary.  (Kristen also had Excedrin.  I love Kristen.)  There was Cassie in the lobby with quiet words and a warm goodbye.

I have a kind and loving partner who takes wonderful care of me, it's true.  But we have twins and jobs and a house renovation and someone needs to take care of her too, and I'm all too rarely up to the task.  I didn't grow up expecting that if I was lagging, I'd have people there to lift me up.  But Sunday morning, and Saturday night too, it just felt like there was this net of kindness below me; like there were people who were concerned about me, who wanted to help, who had stories and hope and warmth to share and who were funny and kind and real. 

So if you saw me weeping in the inappropriate setting of a cocktail party, that's why.  It's the support when you don't quite expect it, the kind words that come out of left field and the friend who tells you they admire how you do something you don't think you did very well at all, but maybe it's not so terrible.  It's the surprising disclosures of personal sorrows, and the remembering of so many heartbreaks tucked into pockets and folds and brought tenderly and quietly into the light to show someone else she might not be completely alone.  It's the sitting in a room making jokes and then with some shift of the air our humanity is uncovered and it's breathtaking and beautiful and deeply sad at the same time.

I feel like I've said all this before, and I have.  It's just that it's gathering time again, and I'm storing up stocks for the winter.

Weekend Idyll

I don't have any pictures, but I hope someone else will post some (or send some to me).  My camera is in Wyoming with my family.

This has been a lovely weekend.  A fiber festival.  A keg party (no, really) attended by a delightful collection of knitters and spinners and bloggers and friends (coined, by blogless Marcy, as a blegger, thank you Marcy).  My house was full to the brim with friends and fiber and good conversation and good beer and good times.  There were wheels and wheels and a pile of fleeces by the side of the door.

I'm recovering now, though no recovery is really necessary, because for me, at least, the weekend was an utter joy.  I feel bad about my house sometimes, but you know, it's at its best when filled to the rafters with wool and good people, and it makes me glad for all that I have.  And truth be told, the weekend was a recovery of sorts itself.  I miss my family, but these few days of unscheduled relaxation, this is the restoration I've been needing.  I'll be a little bit more put-back-together when I see them next.  And that can only be good for everyone.

This was my second spin-a-versary, as we've apparently been taking to calling it.  Sheila Bosworth taught me to spindle at Cummington two years ago, after a few unsuccessful tries on a wheel the previous winter.  Blogging started shortly thereafter, a by-product of my trolling of the net to learn about spinning and deepen my fiber knowledge.  I confess to being a pinch obsessed with all this; I'm like that sometimes, but I've also been recovering from infant twin mommyhood, from infertility, from a couple of complicated journeys my life has taken me on, and which have brought me to this rather bright and sunny and wonderful place and asked me where I want to go next.  There's a very conventional life out there that I could choose, and I'm certainly conventional enough in many ways.  But the wool and the fibery life is an answer, for me, for the moment, to the question "what else?" 

Moms of infants can lose themselves, and honestly, I encourage surrender to the musty, wonderful world of soft downy baby hair and milk and diapers and life in two-minute increments.  I think moms of multiples lose themselves even further than most, and while I don't regret a minute of it, I am nothing like the person I was before.  Today I'm starting from here, from this place of who I am now and all the history that's behind and all the disparate parts of my self (my self?...My selves).  The wool and the blogging and my participation in this community has been part of the process of reconstitution of the selves of my life, and there have been moments when I've despaired of ever feeling whole again, ever feeling like me, or even knowing what that meant.  I've been playing catch-up, sneaking in moments of self-development like I sneak a few stitches on a sock while waiting in line at the pharmacy.  Busy-busy.

But this weekend was expansive, and it brought together people whose values make sense to me, who invest themselves in something as common and ancient as getting wool from shepherds and making it twisty and putting it into loops and then wearing it.  People with passion that might be a little crazy, but who aren't afraid to admit to that and remember that life isn't all about what car you drive or what your house looks like.  People who measure the world in a way that makes sense to me, and if that just shows that they're not any more normal than I am, and well, I suspect none of us thinks normal is a compliment, and that right there shows me I'm in good company.

There's sadness this weekend, too.  Too many people I know are wrestling with their own private heartbreaks, and there were moments when I breathed loss in the air at the festival.  This Cummington marked too many remembered tragedies and too many fresh ones.  It is, after all, a weekend of memorial here.  Communities are complicated places with webs of relationships that flex and stretch in ways that aren't always comfortable.  But this weekend drove home, even more than ever, why I want to do the work to be a part of it, and why I hold the joy and the sadness of those in my life, together.

So here I am, in my happy, wooly house, feeling the remembered buzz of the humming wheels and the laughter and the friendship.  I'm doing laundry and putting the dangerous and fragile tools away in preparation for the children's return.  But I'm holding on to the shimmering vibrations left in this room and the joy of it, and I'm remembering that there is a world, however far-flung and complicated, to which I can bring a self that is, as near as I can see, just about whole.  That there is a world in which the simple, long-remembered motions of drawing up to a wheel and starting to treadle helps to make the stories and jokes and confessions and boasts spin on with the hum of whirring axles; one where the things that don't matter really don't.  A community that is by necessity distant and separate from quotidian reality, but one I love even a little bit more than I did before.

So thanks for coming.  Thanks for being exactly who you are and expecting nothing less from anyone else.  And if you weren't there, know that you were missed, and know that when I say I wish you had been, I mean you, with all your complications and contradictions and confusion.  But thanks for bringing those things here to my virtual living room too, and I hope we'll sit our wheels or our needles or just our chairs nearby one another soon and have a chance to catch up.  And you'll remind me again who I am, and who you are, and how much more there really is in this crazy old world that sometimes gets so narrow.  So thanks.  Just thanks.

Next year, more room for chairs, though, in the real living room.  I'm just saying.

Weekend Update

It was bound to happen.

A blogger picnic at Cummington.

See Katy for deets.

I'll be there with some tasty treat, though I'm not sure what yet.  Still have to make my house vaguely presentable for guests.

Speaking of which, I'm talking beer and pizza after the fest, no need to potluck it, though of course additions to the elegant menu (right, that's pizza and beer) are always welcome.  Bring your wheel.  I'll head down around 4 pm or so, come anytime after that.  Email mama at mamacate dot com for directions.

Now, don't let this scare you off, but there was a bear in my backyard all yesterday afternoon.  Worse than that, this bear knows how to open doors--he opened the back door to my garage, grabbed a 5 lb bag of birdseed and then lounged around the backyard for four hours enjoying the spoils.  It was actually kind of funny to watch, if it wasn't such a bummer in terms of the future safety of my yard (and the future safety of this bear--they say a fed bear is a dead bear, but truly, dude climbed a fence and then turned a doorknob--who knew I needed a deadbolt to keep the wildlife out?).  I'll be sure to keep the back door to the house locked.  Yah.

Of course the digital camera is traveling with the short people, so I don't have any pictures for you.  Happily, I got about 5 minutes of video of my furry visitor, though I ran out of video tape before we got to the blissed-out rolling around on the back after eating the entire bag.

Kind of like me with the double-chocolate milanos.

Anyway, I have no idea how to get video onto my computer, only a vague memory of having done it once and it being a giant hassle, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to post the video anytime soon.  It's not that high on my priority list, since I guess I also have to clean up the bear poop in the yard before y'all come visit.  Better get on that.

Soggy Satisfaction

Wet.  Cold.  I know you've heard about this elsewhere, but really, really wet and cold.

I had to take a picture of my pants.

On the right there you'll see the mittens (Mountain Colors Mountain Goat) that I bought in a moment of desperation.  I usually do my own knitting, but these are wonderful and I'm glad I got them.

I even had a moment when I thought The Path was going to flood.

Anyway, despite being fucking freezing, I actually had a wonderful time.  A lovely evening, with good knitting and conversation with Laura, Doug, Cynthia, Norma, Jo, and Tigger (who impressed us all by lasting until nearly midnight).  Laura has a fiber person's dream house, a lovely view and a rambling place full of nooks and crannies stocked with wheels, looms, fiber, and yarn.  I slept in between a Leclerc and a Kromski.  Life is good.

The next morning, off we went in the pouring rain for, erm, a picnic.

We went right to Dave's booth, and Jo wound up giving a hitchiker a ride back to Ottawa.  These things happen, and I wasn't about to stand in her way.  Then a Grafton Fibers spindle started yelling at me, and I did the only reasonable thing and bought the pushy thing.  Then, I'm standing there minding my own business, and Kellee happens by and--now think about this for a moment--asks me whether she should buy a fleece.  I will add that it is a 7-pound fleece for $21.  Ahem.  I just have to say that I am the right person to ask when you already know the answer.  (It's "yes" by the way.  Just in case you weren't clear.)  Kellee and I were clearly separated at birth.  She pointed out that charkhas are really quite easy to hide.  This is a woman who knows how to think about such things.

There are only a handful of pictures on my camera.  I do, however, recognize a potentially historic moment when I see one.  Julia was readily enabled into a spectacular mahogany Vermont Wheel.  Here's the moment they first met.

You can see the chemistry right there.  As I said in Julia's comments, my happiness for her almost eclipses my burning jealousy that she now owns this wheel.  Almost.

Despite making all sorts of promises to myself about being a bit more responsible with the budget and not spending more on wool and yarn-related purchases than on, say, the mortgage, I did happen to fall down at the Bosworth booth, and I swiped my credit card on the way down.  A book charkha--the one that I have been coveting for a year now--followed me home.  I almost brought it on my business trip today, but I really didn't want to try to explain to TSA what it is.  FemiKnit Mafia was there to witness the incident.  She was enabled into a lovely Bosworth spindle in the process.  I will say that teaching people to spindle is much easier when your hands aren't numb and you're not soaking wet.  Rain date for the Mafia's spinning lesson.

The picnic, if you could call it that, went off pretty darned well considering it was 40 degrees and pouring and the covered picnic tables were occupied by kids' workshops that nobody was attending.  We found a small overhang and got resourceful.  It was actually a lovely get together.  "Your lips are blue, are mine?" was the standard small talk.  But we bloggers proved our mettle mental illness mettle and braved it all for a nice meet and greet.  Next year, baby, it will be sunny and think of what fun we'll have.

I'm very happy to report that my friend Barb's Foxfire Fiber booth was swarmed by bloggers, and I see the cashmere-silk evidence all over blogland today.  That's Norma and Carole fondling the merchandise.  Only Jo held out, despite the rich purpleness of the cashmere-silk roving.  I expect she'll cave at Rhinebeck.  Resistance is futile.

There's more, including photos from a much drier mother's day brunch the next day, but I need to post this if it's ever going to get read.  To round out my week of madness, I'm now in Chicago getting ready to do a poster session (woo!  as in, what the hell was my stupid idea signing up for this thing?) and then to meet up with Sara and Teri (real woo this time) for our professional conference knitblogger meetup.

Because life wasn't weird enough.  But in a good way.

Extra!

ETA: Guess who didn't update her weather information before posting?  I swear it was "scattered showers late" last time I checked.  Yeah, well.  My only excuse is that I'm in the midst of the Week from Hell, part 2 of 5.  Woot.  Anyway, here's the five-day weather report for Concord, NH:

Charming picnic weather, eh?  Rumor has it there's a set of covered picnic tables near the alpacas.  I have only the vaguest memory of this (I was there on a sunny day last year), but let's forget the patch of (soggy) grass.  Look for the covered picnic tables covered with huddled, shivering bloggers.  Dagnabbit.  Who's bringing hot toddies?

 

 Thanks, Jan, for the cool thing.