Knit Sisters

Along with all the other enchanting events of this summer—like getting married to a really incredible man on a sunny day at a lighthouse when I had previously given up all hope of getting married again at all and then having my sister make me some bang-up fancy cakes—my friend Red, the surfer, taught me how to swim in the ocean while we were in North Carolina.

I mean properly.

Those of us who grew up landlocked do not necessarily know how to swim in the sea. In fact, I was thirteen before I ever even saw the Atlantic Ocean and twenty-three before I laid eyes on the Pacific.

And at this rate, I’ll be forty-three before I finish this elephant sweater.

I do however know from soybeans and feeder corn and can, upon request, do a perfectly credible imitation of a 1970s-era radio farm commodities report, the “shipping news” of the Midwest.

The following can only be properly delivered while wearing a John Deere cap. (There is also no talking or commentary between the individual commodity listings. The basic information should be enough for you; there is no need to carry on about it or embellish it. Who do you think you are, some kind of fast-talking East Coast economist? My God man, this is Southwest Iowa, not Wall Street!)

Soybeans, up two.

(Long pause to savor this good news. Silently.)

Feeder corn, down three.

(Another long pause to allow this ominous drop to sink in.)

Milo, up four…

And so forth. It’s a kind of poetry to me. But it doesn’t teach you how to deal with waves.

Last summer, I mistakenly thought I knew how to swim in the Atlantic, which was all well and good until I got hit by a big, big wave. I mean, I stood there and got hit.

The wave broke over my head, swamped me, picked me up, turned me upside down, and smashed me on the beach. Smash, scrape, smash! I had scrapes and sandburn and a bathing suit full of tiny rocks and sand. So roundly was I dashed against the beach that there were little stones and sand in between the lining of my bathing suit and the outer layer.

So there I am sitting on the beach in a tangle of my own limbs, choking up salt water, spitting up small fish, gathering up what tiny shreds are left of my dignity, not to mention my bathing suit, and thinking, “Guess I don’t have the hang of this.”

I finished this Cherry Tree Hill sock, though. (Shown here with canine head.)

This summer, Red showed me that when a wave is about to hit you—and in particular to break right over your head—you just hold your breath, make like a fish, and dive right through it.

In two seconds, you are out on the other side, none the worse for wear and ready to work with the next wave. But that’s the key, you see, a fact that I now understand. You have to work with the wave, you can’t fight it. You can’t stand there like a oak tree and expect a good outcome. You gotta move like a fish, even though instinctively it seems like diving through a big wave like that is the first step down the path toward a drowning death.

Still life with handknit sock.

Even while we were out there diving through the waves, I was thinking that this swimming lesson could be a great metaphor for how to manage life’s difficulties. I think too often I stand there gracelessly and let life’s “waves” hit me, pick me up, and smash me against the beach and then I sit there choking and sputtering and bleeding and wondering what the hell just happened. I struggle and flail about and fight situations I should be wise enough to…dive through and let pass right over my head.

Think there’s any chance I can actually practice that maneuver instead of just bloviating about it on the blog?

Or will it be like Gabriel Garcia Marquez said of wisdom, that it always comes too late to do any good?

Um.

But I have hope. After all, look how much I learned about diving through from just one summer to the next.

I’m just back from North Carolina’s Outer Banks and readjusting to New England’s fabulous weather (90 degrees, 95 percent humidity, thunderstorms expected in the afternoon, one could simply weep…).

This afternoon, for instance, I was caught in a downpour without an umbrella and had to wring out my own hair once I had gained the shelter of the T Stop. I would have wrung out my shirt too if it wouldn’t have constituted public indecency.

Yes, New England is a place that reveals its charms—and there are in fact many—slowly. You must be patient. And it helps if you are a Calvinist.

Comparatively, the Outer Banks is an easy place to love, a magical place (as my OBX friend Geoff put it), a place that is rich in natural beauty:

The sun sets over Jockey’s Ridge.

The foam of a breaking wave on the beach.

A picturesque walk to the fishing pier.

Then, of course, there are the wonderful things one’s younger friends do, like surf:

Red catches a wave. If you haven’t surfed before, let me tell you, this is an achievement. It ain’t as easy as the Beach Boys make it sound. Remember that whole “That’s all there is to the coastline craze”? And “We’re loadin’ up our woody with our boards inside/and headin’ out singin’ our song”? Or who could forget, “When you catch a wave, you’ll be sittin’ on top of the world”? Yeah, well, only if you were born in Ojai. The rest of us are gonna be eatin’ a lot of sand and swallowin’ a lot of salt water before we’re singin’ our song or sittin’ on top of the world.

Or build a sand octopus…

…named Julie.

The Cardinal shows off his creation.

There’s all that, yes, and then there are the noble additions of humankind, like the billboard for Dirty Dick’s restaurant that is emblazoned with the legend: “I got crabs at Dirty Dick’s.”

Truly, the heart soars!

Or the surfer dude driving down Croatan Highway with his left foot out the driver’s side window and the following heartwarming message soaped onto his rear window: “Hey baby, want to ride my longboard? Lookin’ for chix…”

What can one say, but…thank heaven for little boys!

Or the tasteful mementoes, available for purchase at fine stores all along Rte. 158 and suitable for display in one’s home, of the carefree times one has spent in the OBX:

Talk about your robust Morning Blend!

And then, there is as always the knitting:

Here’s a close up of the Cherry Tree Hill Gems Merino sock, born in North Carolina, but fated to live out its life in Massachusetts.

Emerging intarsia elephant:

If you look very closely on the right, you can see his trunk.

So it’s goodbye to all that (except the knitting, of course) until next year when—with any luck at all—our friends will return, the water will be fine, the sunsets will be stunning, and the Outer Banks bazooms mugs will be cheap and easy to procure.

Next year, I’m going to have a set of four accompanied by a gift card shipped to my reprobate uncle: “Dear Uncle Armbruster, Saw these, thought of you!”

I am on vacation with my dear friends J., Red, and The Cardinal, so this will be abbreviated (as I shall almost certainly be called back to the beach directly), but I have a few important points to make.

1. Did you see my sister’s lovely gauntlet pattern, Marquise, over at Elann? I could not be prouder. And what do you think is right smack dab on their home page? You guessed it!

I knew her when…

Go check it out and you can say the same.

2. The Outer Banks in North Carolina are stunningly beautiful this time of year and the area is full of gracious and welcoming people.

Exhibit A: Our beach. We seem to be about the only Northerners here, but we’ve learned to pepper our speech with “y’all” and “all y’all” in order to blend in and earn the trust and respect of our fellow vacationers. It doesn’t work, but at least we’ve given it the old college try! Y’all.

Exhibit B: The Cardinal masterfully flies a Kite at lovely Jockey’s Ridge State Park. If all y’all had been there, you would have been impressed.

3. There is a great yarn store, Knitting Addiction, exactly 0.2 miles from our vacation rental home. Reason enough to love this house, even without factoring in the hot tub and the fabulous…

…Rundown Cafe, which is practically next door. Try Ja love…and a fresh softshell crab sandwich.

But back to the really important stuff. Knitting supplies and suppliers. I got a delightful little Knitting Addiction knitting bag (love these little clear bags!), the local version of which is now a standard souvenir for me wherever my ramblings take me.

Because life is really, really, really too short to knit with ugly yarn.

Knitting Addiction in Southern Shores, NC. Check it out when you hit the Outer Banks, people. Could not be lovelier or have a more friendly staff, namely Brittany and Jeanne. And yes, that is a ball of Tofutsies you spy there. I don’t see a color number on the ball band, but if I were in charge, I’d call it “Sunkist.”

4. I have been knitting, but nothing too grand.

My Cherry Tree Hill Gems Merino sock with a nascent eye-of-newt heel.

Here’s a close-up of the stitch pattern, which I kind of made up on the fly:

I am quite entranced with the effect.

5. My friend Julie, a North Carolina native, assures me that S.L.U.T.S. stands for “Southern Ladies Under Tremendous Stress.” She has formed a S.L.U.T.S. Society in her hometown and apparently the meetings are very well attended.

But when you think about it, if you publicized a meeting of the S.L.U.T.S., you’d expect a fair contingent to show up, wouldn’t you?

They just might not all be ladies. Ahem.

6. And yes…

…unattended children will be sold as slaves.

Thank you. —The Management.

And with that, I gotta run. I have a rather sizeable coterie of small children to sell into slavery, and then I’m gonna mix me up a margarita and hit the beach.

More soon, y’all.

Although I have not accomplished a thing on Rumpelstiltskin, I have been knitting, oh yes I have, and quite industriously too.

First off, I finished these socks:

 

I call these as the “California Striped Socks,” because I started them when I was in California, and it was the first sock of the pair that I was knitting on in the photos from Ellen’s CA reception in the Napa Valley. 

                                    Note how the heels and toes are reversed in color.  I did that not only to be clever and original, but also because I was worried about running out of one of the colors otherwise.

I have to say, it was amazing to me how impressed folks were with my sock-knitting.  Non-knitters seem to regard the making of one’s own socks as something almost magical.  (Either that or you get this [highly original] comment, “You know, you can buy socks three for $5 at Wal-Mart!  Yuk, yuk, yuk!”)

Second, I completed these socks just the other day:

 

These are made from a gorgeous hand-dyed superwash sportweight wool from Textiles a Mano, a company run by Laura Macagno-Shang, a lovely woman who lives just down the road from me in St. Joseph, MO.  She dyes all her own yarns and has recently opened a small yarn shop in St. Joe, which features (naturally) her own yarns and a few other select brands.  She also regularly visits festivals and shows with her yarns, so be sure to check out her stuff if you ever have the chance.  Certainly, if you live in my neck of the woods, the shop is worth a visit.  She has a great color sense and is always dreaming up new colorways.  In fact, she told me that she rarely repeats a colorway, so if you see something you like, you’d better buy all of it!

 

I knit these from a pattern in More Sensational Knitted Socks, by Charlene Schurch.  I liked the groovy little wavy lines in the pattern and thought it might look nice with the hand-dyed yarn.  And I think it does, too.

And third, I’ve started on these:

Socks which I refer to as my “GI Socks.”  These are going to be sent to a National Guardsman in Afghanistan.  On the plane back from Boston, I sat next to a very nice young man who was on his way to Fort Riley, KS to be shipped out.  I was finishing up the striped socks and working on the Textiles a Mano socks, and he was very interested in my sock-making.  I told him that if he would give me his address, I would make him a pair of socks and send them to him, since after all it gets very cold there in the winter.  So, these are destined to be worn in Afghanistan by a man I barely know; political views notwithstanding, everyone deserves a pair of handknit wool socks in a cold climate.

My helpful gift registry people tell me that there are now only twenty-nine days until the “big event.” Thankfully, the most recent wedding gift that has been sent to us is a miniature cocktail shaker and four martini glasses.

Now there’s someone who’s really thinking! With twenty-nine days to go, I honestly can’t think of anything we need more than martinis. Not a blessed thing. Thank you! Thank you! A million times, thank you!

Seriously, though, I actually feel much better about this whole wedding business than I did last week or the week before. I know I had a lot to say about the major issues surrounding the over-commercialization of weddings in our wildly dysfunctional society and all the feminist issues they raise and all the rest of it. I’m not retracting any of that, but the thing that made me feel so much better about going to California and the wedding and the reception out there was…(wait for it…)…finding a great dog sitter for Shelley.

Yep. I’m telling you! Like night and day after I found this woman. I actually started looking forward to the wedding after I met with Jen and introduced her to my dog. No joke.

Shelley loved Jen and Jen said a number of admiring things about Shelley and then, magically, I could feel my anxiety lifting.

Just goes to show you that you might think you really have major issues with social injustice and rampant materialism and “the gaze” and female objectification and the prioritization of beauty over substance and the devaluation of women over thirty-five and so on and so forth, but it could turn out that you’re just worried about who’s going to take care of yer dog.

Lord, who wouldn’t be worried, prize dog like this?

Furthermore, I picked up my wedding dress at the Bridal Barn (with a vehicular assist from Nasser, whose socks are now finished, see below), and I saw that it was, in fact, good. Heartwarmingly, a couple of fellow Barn customers wandered by during the fitting and said, unprompted, “Wow, that’s a really beautiful dress on you!”

On the other hand, what are they going to say? “Wow, you look like Grendel’s mother in her Sunday best. Is there time to find another gown? Get some plastic surgery? Or maybe just cancel the wedding?”

While I was at the Barn, I also learned how to attach an eight-point bustle (you can think of the eight-point bustle as the hyperfeminine counterpart to the eight-point buck…or something like that) from Mercedes, alterations goddess extraordinaire. Cake! Complete cake. That is, as long as you haven’t had a couple of martinis (see above).

Mountain Colors Bearfoot, a lovely sock yarn with a touch of mohair, in color Deep Blue. A color that is very, very hard to see when you knit, but very, very lovely when the finished object is presented. I knit these on two circulars, U.S. Size 2.

Thanks to that Bridal Barn lesson, I am now prepared to manage effectively should I suddenly be catapulted backwards through time into the 19th century and find myself confronting eight-point bustles on a daily basis. Makes it all worthwhile, people. All worthwhile.

Because time travel happens nearly constantly.

Nasser in his role as foot model. Note the near-perfect fit of these socks. Why, it’s almost like they were…made for him!

And no, Incomparable Kate, you may not see the wedding gown and its eight-point bustle until the wedding. If it were up to me, I’d say yes, but you start dealing with a dress that big with a train that significant and those things just have minds of their own. They also get quite arrogant and prima donna-ish what with all this talk about “the most important dress you will ever wear” and “the perfect gown” and “the most you will ever spend on any single garment, sucker” and such. That’s what they hear all day long. Really goes to their heads. Long story short, the gown is refusing to leave its garment bag until June 21st.

At which point it will emerge and almost certainly demand a martini. Fortunately, I’ll be prepared.

Well, well, well. If Laura didn’t tag me for the “Seven Random Things About You” meme. She has asked that I not “hate her” for doing this and I have promised only to hate her for a maximum of fifteen seconds. At which time the hate will revert to my former fondness and admiration for her and all will be forgiven.

In the meantime, I am facing the challenge of finding seven random things to tell you that I have not already revealed, being as I am rather free with random details about myself.

While I’m thinking, here’s the state of Nasser’s thank-you-for-driving-me-to-the-Bridal-Barn-in-the-rain-last-Friday socks:

Darn near finished! It’s hard to say who is more excited: me or Nasser.

And now, without further ado, the seven things, random or otherwise. These are in no way related to the Seven Pillows of Strength:

1. Even more than I imagined when we started this blog last June, I really enjoy blogging on a regular basis. So much so that I was actually somewhat surprised when Alex mentioned to me last night that he would prefer that I not post during the week of our wedding and (very brief) honeymoon.

I can’t imagine why he would feel this way, can you?

But you’ll get the full story when I get back. Don’t you worry.

2. For at least the past two years, I’ve been threatening to take up cross-stitch so that I could make my loyal and long-suffering psychologist/counselor/life coach a sampler that reads, “Home is where your mental health care professional is.”

3. Weight-lifting is practically a religious experience for me. I find it deeply meditative to do chest presses with a 25 pound barbell in each hand.

That said, I understand from my cursory examination of bridal magazines and women’s fitness magazines that other women are supposedly concerned about lifting relatively large amounts of weight because they are afraid of becoming “bulky.”

I do not fear the bulk. Every woman on the Bales side of my family, after which I take, becomes bulky in her upper body as she ages. The bulk is a given. The only open question is whether or not that bulk jiggles.

Big weights, no jiggle.

4. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I am a crazed drill sergeant when it comes to moving. This tendency is not ameliorated by the fact that I have moved five times in the last five years. On the contrary, if anything, I’ve become more fanatical and less tractable around this issue as I’ve perfected my moving skills.

Boxes I packed a week ago.

A couple of the boxes I packed yesterday. Move: June 15th.

Although I give lip-service to “understanding” and “appreciating” others’ lazy, disorganized, and immoral less structured way of moving house, the truth is that I believe that it is wrong and possibly dangerous.

5. Here is a photo of the boxes that Alex has packed:

Hey, wait just a minute, soldier! Is that wooden hand flipping me off? No, on second examination, I guess it isn’t.

It would be somewhat alarming to any self-respecting Packing Drill Sergeant to find the man that she was about to marry approaching a move in this fashion.

But then again, not quite as alarming as when Saul Bellow died and, as the literary maven of our household, I reported this to Alex, who replied, “Saul Bellow. Who’s he?”

We got through that. We’ll get through this.

6. I currently have forty-seven pairs of shoes.

7. I keep a black-and-white baby photo of myself hanging amongst the other family photos I have displayed in my office. The other pictures in the gallery include a baby photo of my grandmother, a photo of my grandmother holding my father when he was a baby, and a photo of the intern class of 1934 at Kansas City’s General Hospital in which my grandfather is in the front row, third man from the left.

My sister thinks it is in poor taste to display a baby photo of oneself. I disagree.

One more thing: Check this out. Make sure you listen to I Was Just Flipped Off By a Silver-Haired Old Lady with a “Honk if You Love Jesus” Sticker on the Bumper of Her Car. I heard this on the radio this weekend (while packing) and I wanted to share.

Back on Wednesday, when I’ll have some finished socks to show (Lord willing) and will be making a long-overdue return to Minnie…

I was reading in the New York Times this morning about the terrible burden that is placed on affluent New Yorkers when they own a second home in “the country.” I’m putting “the country” in scare quotes because—and this is an observation borne of seven years experience of living in Manhattan—what New Yorkers, bless their sweet, naïve urban hearts, call “the country” is not what the rest of America thinks of as country.

They are talking about the Hamptons or scenic parts of the Hudson River Valley. We are talking about fields of soy beans, hog lots, grain silos, failed crops, and foreclosures.

I learned from the Times this morning that these people have to contend with terrible dilemmas: the question of whether or not to invite weekend guests (the guilt is simply overwhelming if one leaves one’s less affluent friends stuck in the city!), how to find a good contractor to build a cabana for the pool, how to find someone reliable to do the “spring clean-up” on the grounds when you will be in Paris for the spring, and so forth.

I have to admit I remain unmoved.

Perhaps I just wasn’t fully awake and could not appreciate the peculiar trials of the economic elite. I’m sure it will hit me full force around noon, when you’ll hear me say to myself, “Yes, you know, those people neither have children dying in a pointless war in Iraq, nor are they forced to decide between heating or eating, but it certainly is true that it’s getting harder and harder these days to find a servant who can polish the silver properly!”

Chez Balerstein, however, things are going fairly well, in spite of our ongoing struggles to manage our household servants.

I have continued to pack and Alex has continued not to pack, and we have received our first wedding gift:

If I’ve learned one thing from getting married twice, it’s that if you put something on your registry that is in the shape of a heart, people will jump on that like a galloping horse. That said, I love this pot! The people who sent it—although I have never met them—are now my new best friends.

I also made great progress on Nasser’s socks:

Which is a good thing, too, since he is lending me his car again this afternoon so that I can pick up my wedding gown.

The little bit of mohair in the Mountain Colors Bearfoot makes these socks absolutely scruptious. Nasser has been appropriately appreciative in the two sock “fittings” we’ve had thus far. Smart man.

Shelley, meanwhile, continues to beg discreetly during breakfast (lunch, and dinner):

Keep your eyes on the prize.

Have a great weekend everyone! Back with more Bridal Barn updates, I’m sure, next week…

First things first: thanks so much to all of you who left such lovely comments about our dream house! It’s hard for me even to express how much this house means to us.

I also think it was very brave of Sarah and the Incomparable Kate to admit that they are a little jealous. This revelation of an ignoble emotion makes me admire the two of them all the more because it shows a certain genuineness that I greatly value. It is also the case that I have often been the one who was “a little jealous.” Sometimes a little jealous like Medea. Here’s what I can say: we all deserve to live in a place we love.

Or none of us do.

But that’s a broader philosophical topic and would probably involve invoking original sin and a number of other outmoded notions about the moral poverty of the human condition that only a handful of us still seem to find instructive.

So erring on the side of generosity towards our species, I would wish a dream house for all of you, but especially my sister, who is actively hunting for that house now.

Here’s some Greek oregano and a mint plant I am growing in pots for easy transport to the new house.

In the midst of all of our wonderful news and good fortune, of course, the days until the wedding continue to tick away. Tick, tick, tick, tick…

But in the course of a conversation with my friend Heidi, who is a professor at Harvard and therefore arguably more likely than the average bear to have insight into all things bearish, I realized why it is that I so dislike being a bride. Or perhaps more accurately, why I so dislike anticipating being a bride.

Wanna hear? Oh, I knew you would!

While I’m at it, here’s my progress on Nasser’s sock. The yarn is Mountain Colors Bearfoot in color “Deep Blue.” It’s a wool/mohair/nylon blend and absolutely scrumptious. The pattern is, of course from Interweave’s Favorite Socks, a book I’m coming to know and love.

Heidi, in her wisdom, offered the astute observation that for many of us, being a bride has some parallels with the coming-out experience for a gay man or a lesbian. In other words, the experience mobilizes anxieties about gender roles, the expectations of others and the gap between those expectations and reality, and the strong possibility of being judged and found wanting.

In both cases, even if things go as well as could possibly be expected, those anxieties are still lively and we carry them into our interactions, especially with our family members, and they color our judgements when we interpret how people respond to us. And in both cases, these anxieties center around gender issues.

In the case of a living, breathing, flawed (and sometimes relatively old) bride, the cultural archetype against which she is measured is a hyper-feminized, exquisitely beautiful, fecund young woman. And the process of preparing for your wedding is, inevitably, bound up (at least at certain junctures) in how well you reflect that ideal. Guess what?

Bzzt. You lose!

And since culture is NEVER “just culture” and since it is nearly impossible to simply put all of these influences and expectations completely out of your head at all times, even if you think they are complete rubbish and utter bollocks and you in fact feel pretty good about yourself, you will find yourself some days looking in the mirror and thinking, “I’m almost forty years old, I’m not as thin as I used to be, I have no interest in childbearing, I tend to be opinionated, I laugh really loudly, and I bench press ninety pounds. So much for the delicate fairy-tale princess, folks!”

Good times, good times.

But there are even worse days than that, of course. And on those days, you find yourself cringing at the thought of meeting all of those guests who are friends and family of your beloved’s parents, people you’ve never met before and may well never meet again. Since you don’t know them, you tend to project your anxieties onto them. Even though you are sure, intellectually, that they are lovely people.

But let me repeat and clarify: this is not about intellect and it isn’t even about reality. It’s about archetypes. It’s about the eternal feminine. It’s about being exposed and on display. It’s about the awful undertow of cultural expectations.

And when you have a really bad day, you think to yourself, “Those people probably don’t know how old I am. They will be expecting a much younger woman. A woman with nary a grey hair. A woman without laugh lines. Will I confront their irrepressible ‘looks of horror’ at my own wedding reception? On the drive home will they turn to one another and say, ‘I had no idea she would be that old. Poor Alex, he’s ruining his life.’?

Now, returning back to Planet Earth, the truth is that they will probably spend the ride home discussing the high price of gasoline in California, talking about their son’s baseball game, opining about the most recent season of American Idol, and deciding where to go for Sunday brunch.

For better or for worse, we just don’t think about other people all that much.

You see, I do know this. I also don’t want you to waste your breath in the comments telling me that I’ll look lovely, that I should feel confident, etc., etc. I actually know that too. And when the day of the reception comes, I’ll have a great time because at that moment, I’ll feel just fine being me. Like I do 99% of the time.

But this confrontation with the archetype…this is the really bad, bad stuff. This is the shadow-boxing part. This is the anticipation of being publicly scrutinized based not on your intellect, your sense of humor, your talents, or your rare and delightful personal qualities, but on your appearance and—at some dark, primitive subterranean level—on your reproductive viability.

Under those circumstances, a person like me is maybe, just maybe, going to go just the tiniest bit crazy. Just the tiniest bit.

Forty-two more days. Then it will all be over and I can go back to ignoring the eternal feminine, as I have all my life, and those who love me will still love me and those who are disappointed in me or find me off-putting will still basically dislike me and all will be well with the world.

See how easy? Forty-two more days. Piece of cake. Wedding cake, that is.

Sometimes, friends, you are in the right place at the right time. And when that happens, you gotta savor it. Because it doesn’t come along all that often.

The weekend kicked off on Friday afternoon when we learned that Alex had received a very tasty fellowship for the next academic year from the Department of Energy. Very tasty. In fact, with the combination of his DOE fellowship and my fellowship from Berkeley, we may soon be able to enter the ranks of the lower middle class.

From have-nots to premium have-nots!

You can imagine our excitement.

Upwardly mobile and it feels so good.

Already in a celebratory mood, we wended our way homeward to find a letter from one of our next-door neighbors in our mailbox. This neighbor is, in fact, the one who lives in the most desirable house on our street, the house that I have beheld often, I will admit it, with envy in my heart.

The house about which I have often remarked to Alex, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could have a house like that someday?” and “J. and P.’s house is my dream house,” and “They must be deliriously happy every day, living in a house like that and not having a lying, cheating, craphound landlord to poison their very existence,” and so on and so forth.

A house like this is one of the world’s sweet things.

Yes, a letter from J. and P., the owners of the blessed little house.

The letter said this (I am paraphrasing and editing for brevity. I am also embellishing, but that’s no more than you have come to expect from me, I’d wager.):

Dear Ellen and Alex,
We are moving to a new house in a nearby town, but we don’t really want to sell our current house right now.

Warmly,
J. and P.

Side entrance of little dream house.

I read this letter, my hand trembling with amazement and disbelief. Interested? Try, say, “possessed by the deepest sort of soulful longing.” Try “my heart’s desire.” Try “nothing could make me happier.”

So I appeared in the doorway of Alex’s office, waving the letter in my left hand. “Is there any reason, aside from being incredibly stupid or certifiably insane, that we wouldn’t take them up on this offer? Any reason you can think of?”

“No,” he said. “I can’t think of any.”

And so, since we are only moderately crazy and really not at all stupid, we called them and we will be moving next door to my dream house in mid-June.

I CANNOT BELIEVE OUR LUCK!

One more thing. You know how we are having our East Coast wedding reception at our home in July. Yeah? Well, this is our new backyard:

The gardeners, I hasten to remind you, will be coming every week.

Lest you had forgotten, this is how our current backyard looks, pursuant to the removal of the Lost Patio of Atlantis:

Hallelujah, I’ve been saved!

Oh, about that knitting. I’ve been making some socks for Nasser to thank him for driving me to the Bridal Barn for my gown fitting. He richly deserves these socks.

Close-up:

I’m going blind working with navy blue, but it’s worth it for such a good friend.

And now, let me leave you with one last shot of the house:

People, it just doesn’t get any better than this.

I’m glad to learn from your comments that some of you found The E. Bales “Seven Pillows of Strength” a valuable source of wisdom and—naturellement!—self-help.

As Oscar Wilde once said, “You have to give advice. Heaven knows you can’t use it yourself.”

In fact, just today I was headed down the path to what I like to call a “Seven Pillows of Strength” day, but was derailed from my planned exercise routine by a mid-afternoon flute of champagne (or two…or four…) with Kerry and Sean. While we were working at the yarn shop. Normally, we don’t drink and try to sell yarn because disastrous gauge and yarn substitution errors can easily occur after hittin’ the sauce, but today was special.

Our apologies to our late afternoon customers. We may not have shown the same incisive, razor-sharp knitting acumen that you’ve come to expect from us.

Here’s why we were swilling champagne at 3 p.m.: Sean bought the store! Yes, he is now the proud (and sometimes worried sick) owner of Harvard Square’s very own yarn shop. Hop on over to his blog and give him some love, support, and congratulations, will you? This is big bananas.

Let’s take a moment to honor the fact that Sean has achieved one of his dreams, shall we? Days like this don’t come along very often, and when they do, you really have to pause and feel the joy.

Champagne can facilitate that.

I also started knitting again and I even have a F.O. to display, although after Sarah’s revelation of her splendid Handsome Triangle shawl, I feel my offering is a tad underwhelming:

There is something so mid-80s, so Reagan-Years, so Flock-of-Seagulls, so (Lord help us) Bryan-Adams about these socks that it almost brings a tear of nostalgia to your eye. Key word being “almost.”

The traditional eye-of-newt heel shot.

The specs go something like this:
Pattern: Flame Wave Socks (aka Material Girl Socks) from Favorite Socks: 25 Timeless Designs from Interweave. A wonderful book, although the way I made these socks, they were anything but timeless. But why pick nits? I modified the pattern slightly by using the eye-of-newt heel and a different toe.

Yarn: Cascade Fixation in Pink. 2 balls. Leftovers: two marble-sized balls. Certainly not enough to choke a horse.

Needles: 2 each of US Size 5 and US Size 4 twenty-four inch Addi Turbo circular needles. Or, as Alex once quite earnestly called them, “the Speedy-Dos.”

When I laughed uproariously at his error, he pointed out to me that “Speedy-Dos” was not, after all, a priori a more silly name than “Addi Turbos,” and I’m afraid I was forced to concede the point.

I told Sean I would finish these babies today, and by God, I did! Consider them a tribute to your business ownership, Sean.

On another note, I’ve been meaning to mention a couple of things that have made me very happy anew that we have this blog and that I now know so many delightful people in the knitting blogosphere, people I would never have met otherwise.

The first wonderful occurrence was that Hanna wandered into Woolcott a while back and, after reading her comments and corresponding with her for several months, I finally got to meet her in person. She was just as beautiful, thoughtful, smart, and wise in person as she is on the internets.

I also recommend that you have a look at her new hat pattern on MagKnits. Not only is it an extremely pleasing hat, but one of the photos also features a very fine-looking dog.

Secondly, I’d like to thank Laura for putting me onto The Decemberists, specifically their Crane Wife. It was her enthusiasm for the band that piqued my interest and I’d like to give credit where credit is due.

Not only is the music great, but it earned me some desperately-needed hipness points with Alex, who had previously been thoroughly convinced that I knew nothing of any music recorded after 1990 (yes, ladies and gents, the year he turned nine and I turned, um, twenty-two) and that the popular music of the 1980s, with its grave aesthetic shortcomings and retrospectively comical use of synthesizers, could fairly be thought of as “The Music of My Life.”

This unfortunate impression was only reinforced when he discovered me in a shameful, nostalgic reverie over a-ha’s iconic video of Take On Me. I’m sorry to report that he laughed at me, trampling mercilessly upon the vestiges of my youth, ripping the gauzy veil of nostalgia from my eyes, and forcing me to the painful conclusion that the 80s were crap.

Young people can be so cruel.