Knit Sisters

Yesterday was the “sixty-days-left-to-the-Big-Event!” milestone, a fact I was reminded of by one of our on-line registries—which seems to have taken it upon itself to tell me every time I log on how many days are “left.”

It’s basically the marital version of the Doomsday Clock.

I very clearly remember when there were 272 days left and now there are only sixty. Huh.

There has been very little knitting done around here, except for a little work on the pink socks, which endear themselves more greatly to me every day. They remind me of a favorite pair of pink socks I had when I was sixteen, a pair which passed on to their sock-y reward lo these many years ago, along with the rest of my Madonna Wanna-Be garments of the same era.

The day was observed with a visit to the Bridal Barn for my first gown fitting. In this awesome undertaking I was accompanied by my friend Nasser, who kindly gave me what my friends in New York used to refer to as “the gift of arrival.” In most areas of the country “the gift of arrival” is probably a puzzling concept, but in NYC, where only a tiny minority of our circle of friends owned cars, a person who drove you somewhere was bestowing a very great gift indeed.

Even now, Alex and I are “car-free” (note positive spin on yet another graduate school, poverty-induced inconvenience!) so Nasser and his Ford Taurus have on occasion helped us out when public transportation has proved to have its limits. Such was the case yesterday.

Besides, even if there had been a bus to the Bridal Barn, I couldn’t have availed myself of its service, burdened as I was by a seventy-pound wedding gown in an unwieldy garment bag, and two large shopping bags filled with shoes, undergarments, and various species of headdress.

It was frankly bordering on the absurd.

So is the fact that by my count, the bustle on my dress is going to have EIGHT attachment points. EIGHT! The Bridal Barn staff in fact recommended that I bring the person who would help dress me on my wedding day to the next fitting so that she might memorize the pattern of the bustle attachments. Since that person is my dear sister, and since she lives in the Midwest, that simply won’t be possible.

We’ll have to rely on our wits!

Dear Lord, is it possible that two women with some knowledge of garment-making and four degrees between them will not be able to figure out a bustle? Say it ain’t so!

Repeat after me: I will not to be outwitted by a flippin’ dress. I will not be outwitted by a flippin’ dress. I will not be outwitted by a flippin’ dress.

I am strong. I am invicible. I am WOMAN!

I will not be outwitted by my own wedding dress.

The Lost Patio of Atlantis is another matter entirely. Note that twenty more stones have been removed from their place in nature. Twenty-nine remain. And yes, for those of you keeping score at home, I low-balled the total the first time. It was a necessary delusion.

I helped. It simply could not have been achieved without my assistance.

So…eight bustle attachment points plus hemming the gown: it took over an hour for the lovely alterations woman at the Bridal Barn just to pin all that up. Bless her heart. Whatever she’s paid, it isn’t enough.

Especially considering that she told me that I didn’t look a day over twenty-seven.

Nasser, however, had a rougher experience. While I was slowly transforming into a walking pin-cushion, Nasser was waiting outside. Which meant he was on the front lines of the Junior-Senior Prom Crowd. I didn’t witness any of this, but Nasser expressed his extreme dismay at the directness, even brutality, with which the mothers commented on the relative physical gifts or lack thereof of their daughters. Who were trying on the prom dresses, of course.

Now. I just need to say—although I know none of our readers are actually the perpetrators here—that we have got to stop this. As women, we have got to stop this. We have got to stop making other women, especially young women, feel like their worth depends on the size of their boobs and their behinds. It’s damaging, it’s retrograde, it’s insidious. It cuts against everything we’ve worked for and it’s not a minor problem.

Are ya through preachin’, Ma? Cause we’re all kinda tired.

Enough said. We all get the point.

Me? I’m pleased to report that, in spite of the pressures of the bridal industry, I have not dropped a dress size. Nope. The wedding gown still fits as beautifully as it did when I bought it last June.

Except that now there’s an eight-attachment bustle to contend with…but Sarah and I are up to the challenge.

I finally finished the pink Cherry Tree Hill socks!  Woohoo!  And just in time to wear and enjoy them during what is (we hope) the final cold snap of the year.

 

Another view, wherein you can see the eye of partridge (or eye of newt, as my dear sister says) heel flap.

 

Specs:

Yarn:  Cherry Tree Hill 100% merino superwash sock yarn, purchased as a mill end on Ebay.

Pattern:  Twin Rib sock from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch

Gauge:  8 stitches per inch on #1 needles

Time to finish:  Completely unknown

Wearing your own handmade socks during cold weather:  Priceless

There’s a lot going on in my life right now, so my knitting has been suffering a bit.  Nevertheless, I did knit a few rounds this evening on the second Cherry Tree Hill sock,

 

bringing it almost up to the point at which I can start decreasing for the toe.

It’s supposed to turn off cold for the next few days, so if I could actually finish these, I might have a chance to wear them during winter’s last gasp.  (Or perhaps you could say during the first chill days of spring.  April is the cruelest month, after all.)

I’ve also managed to knit a few more rows of my green cotton cables and lace swatch:

                                          (Seen here looking very romantic in the candlelight.)

You can see at the top that I separated the two sides as though for a v-neck opening.  I’m decreasing on either side of the cables so that the cables will run up the sides of the opening and the stitches in the body of the swatch/sweater would be eaten up by the decreases.  I’m thinking that the raglan line should have a cable running up the center as well, with the decreases on either side of it.

Deb commented on the larger cable on the left-hand side, asking about how I might incorporate it into the design.  Actually, I’ve pretty much given up on that cable in this design.  Originally, I had envisioned it running up the center of the front and back, but as I worked on it I realized that it was just too busy for the rest of the sweater that I had in mind. 

This is a problem that I often run into when designing–knowing when to stop.  I have a tendency to think that the more details and motifs you include, the better.  Really, the reverse is often true:  knowing what to cut out so as to reduce your design to just the essentials, and letting those essentials carry the piece.  Then include the little details of good craftmanship that elevate the “homemade” to the “handmade.”

Yup, that’s the goal.  Plus, I need to finish those socks for the coming chill.

Near our house, there is a large funeral home with unseemly bright red awnings that Shelley and I pass by almost every day on our neighborhood walks. They seem to do a land-office business there because we frequently see the undertakers (yes, I realize that now they are referred to as “funeral directors,” an antiseptic and somewhat euphemistic title in my opinion, which is why I greatly prefer the more archaic, yet more robustly descriptive term “undertaker.” Because that’s where they take you. Under.) standing outside in their black suits looking solemn, waiting for someone to bring them a body or perhaps biding their time until mourners show up.

I like to wave to them and holler, “Not today, boys! You’re not getting me today!”

Getting a whiff of the thawing ground, and all the good things that the new season promises.

Those undertakers aren’t getting me anytime soon, either.

Thanks to the talented Dr. F., who—true to her word—did not find anything unusual, unfortunate, or suspicious with her little camera, I am now free of what Lorinda’s people call “the buttoscope” for another decade.

The lone purple crocus, brave little soldier of spring.

I am also free of worry and fear, and it is hard to put a price tag on that. In spite of the fact that everyone said I would be fine, and in spite of the fact that the Incomparable Kate, good friend and commentator extraordinaire, actually looked up the colon cancer statistics for women my age and found that—as she put it—we weren’t dealing with the proverbial horse and zebra scenario, we were dealing with horses and, say, albino sugar gliders…in spite of all that, I had a friend who was the albino sugar glider, and it was hard for me to shake the fear that if it could happen to her, well…

But I was quite proud of myself, because I got through yesterday with only minimal squirrellyness and anxiety and I handled the “preparation” with a good attitude and reasonably good grace. I mean, considering.

Of course, I was up all night, but Alex pretty much stayed up with me, having declared as early as 7 p.m. that he was, “thinking of tonight as like a slumber party, only with one guest who has uncontrollable diarrhea.”

Isn’t that sweet?

I finished this sock during the “party.”

And I had exactly this much yarn left. Marble and small bits of sea glass included for scale.

So I was feeling pretty good by the time I got to the Endoscopy and Buttoscope Center this morning at 6:45 a.m. Pretty. Darn. Good. I was feeling courageous. I was prepared for glory!

That is, until I learned that the adept and skillful nurse who had just run a needle into a vein in my right arm and hooked me up to an IV drip—a minor procedure that nonetheless terrifies me but which I had borne stoically because I was operating in the heroic mode, you see—that that nurse had just come out of her own colonoscopy which she had endured without sedation or drugs of any kind.

Whoa! Gastrointestinal nurses, cowboy up!

She gave me a pat and said, “But I don’t recommend that for anyone else.”

Yeah, no joke. Don’t try this at home, kids. It’s all fun and games until someone loses a polyp. While she is fully conscious.

“Right,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m no hero.” Truth will out.

But you know, the whole thing really wasn’t that bad. I remember very little of what actually happened during the test. And unlike graduate school, where I am always ten to twelve years older than nearly all my compatriots—in other words, I may as well be Methuselah—I was the youngest person at the Center.

It was kind of fun, what with croci blooming and robins pulling worms out of the ground, to feel like I was the spring chicken. You know, just this once.

And not again for another decade.

Yesterday morning, as I was reading the Sunday New York Times and nearly jumping out of my skin with fear, anxiety, dread, and horror as I obsessed about my upcoming colonoscopy on Wednesday morning contemplating the week to come with courage, dignity, and fortitude, I thought to myself, “How could I make the day before the colonoscopy—given that on Tuesday I will only be able to drink clear fluids and eat Jell-O, NOT RED! (emphasis original)—a little more, oh, festive, a little more fun?”

I announced to Alex, “I’m going to make some multi-layer Jell-O ‘salads’ for myself.”

“What?” he replied. “Are you sure you know how to do that?”

Oh, ye of little faith! Honey, I was raised a church-going Midwestern Protestant. My people know the multi-layer Jell-O salad. We know its engineering, we know its beauty, we know its power to heal.

We can make ’em with seven layers, each with a different embedded fruit or vegetable, quicker than you can say, “Potluck Sunday dinner!” We can make ’em to feed the multitudes, for multi-layer Jell-O salads are truly the loaves and fishes of the Midwest. And we know the palliative value of a multi-layer Jell-O salad, the way it can ease your anxiety, calm your nerves, and make you feel closer to Jesus.

That’s what I need right now.

Layer One: Orange, and naturally fat free!

It was a difficult aesthetic decision to choose the color for the second layer, because so much of the “tone” of the salad is determined by that choice.

Layer Two: Lime…and naturally fat free!

At that point, since I am disallowed the red and I can’t in good conscience condone new-fangled flavors like “Berry Blue,” I pretty much had to go with the lemon:

Et voilà! A three-layer Colonoscopy Jell-O Dee-Lite! In a dog-themed glass.

Bon appétit!

I am also knitting to ease my nerves:

Whole sock, thusfar. Love that pink Fixation!

Eye-of-newt heel.

Lord willing, I’ll be back on Wednesday. Keep your fingers crossed, will you? And maybe make yourself a nice Jell-O salad in the meantime. Believe me, it’ll cure what ails you.

I would like to note that at this hour exactly three months from today, our wedding will be over. Can I hear y’all say, “Hallelujah!”?

Because I gotta tell you, this whole wedding planning thing is really getting to me. As my friend and colleague Chitra noted, “There is absolutely no natural relationship between deciding to spend the rest of your life with someone and being an event planner.”

We did get these lovely rings, however. Just in case you are wondering, at the last minute we decided against having “Really love your peaches” engraved on the inside. I still think of it as a missed opportunity.

Chitra is right. Our wedding is all about the “less-is-more” concept, so much so that it cuts against nearly every received idea the wedding industry has tried to sell Americans, and yet somehow there still seem to be a fifty gazillion nagging, irritating, and emotionally-charged details to deal with every single day.

And ultimately, no matter how much noble breath is wasted on the idea of gender equity, when it comes to a wedding, every single one of those details is referred for adjudication to…the bride!

But here’s some bad news, folks: the bride barely knows a tea rose from a dandelion. The bride is not an etiquette expert. The bride does not have strong opinions about cake fillings. The bride is not interested in matchy-matchy bridal swag or “The Future Mrs. Wellerstein” t-shirts.

The bride is frankly just not that, well…bridal. And that is why the bride is considering erasing her identity, running away to the Greek Islands, and living out the remainder of her days under an assumed name. The bride can develop a discerning taste for retsina and Greek men, trust me.

But since that whole erase-your-identity thing is kind of a radical move, and since I was kind of having a mini wedding meltdown today, I decided instead to relieve some of the pressure by starting a new project.

You have to admit that more knitting is a better stress-relief strategy than drinking three-quarters of a bottle of Jack Daniels and heading out in the woods with a shotgun. Heavens, the last thing I’d want to do is drink three-quarters of a bottle of Jack and go out into the woods with a shotgun!

But it is on the list.

Not that Minnie has been abandoned. Far from it! She is developing into a lovely girl:

I’m quite pleased with my progress on the fronts.

I just decided to start these socks:

From this delightful new book from Interweave Press:

Cascade Fixation in pink (pink!) on size 5 needles.

These babies will be done before you can say, “Something borrowed and something blue, my *ss.”

Shelda asked about the sock pattern I have in mind for the beaded socks.  Actually, this is a Heartstrings sock kit which I purchased from our mutual friend Carol H. a while back.  The pattern was included, and the colorway is “purple iris.”

At first when I bought this kit from Carol, I didn’t think I’d make the pattern as written.  I just wasn’t too sure about the whole idea of beaded socks.  But the idea has sort of grown on me, so now I think I’ll go ahead and make them according to the pattern.

But first, I need to make myself another knitted dishcloth.  I bought this hemp yarn from Elann recently with just that purpose in mind, having heard that hemp is naturally bacteria-resistant.

Now, I know that some people have lots of fun making different dishcloth patterns, but I myself just use the garden-variety, start-with-two-stitches-and-increase dishcloth pattern.  This may be because I only start knitting a dishcloth when I absolutely, positively need one, so I need to get it done as quickly as possible.

I have a week and a half before I go to the fiber retreat in Jefferson City, and it occurred to me recently that I had written on my registration that I would be putting Blue Bamboo in the gallery of student work.  Uh oh.  Guess I better pull it back out and work on it.  In typical fashion, I petered out while working on the sleeves.  I’m about two-thirds through the first one.

Then, after completing the sleeves, I’ll put the leaf edging along the fronts.

Will I be able to finish it in time?  Only time will tell…. 

And, truly, I guess if I don’t, no doubt nothing tragic will occur. 

I recently had occasion to go through my stash of sock yarn, looking for that perfect yarn to make a new pair of socks.  (Although, naturally, I am not quite done with the present pair.  But no matter…)  This made me realize just how much sock yarn I actually own.

As a sort of confessional exercise, then, I offer the following pictorial directory entitled:

Sarah’s Sock Yarn Stash

1.  Regia 4-ply Patch Antik.  5 balls=4 pairs of socks.

2.  Elann Sock it to Me! Puzzle.  10 balls=5 pairs of socks.

 

3.  Elann Sock it to Me! Essential 4-ply.  16 balls=8 pairs of socks.  I bought all these colors with the idea of making striped socks and socks with heels and toes of different colors.

 

4.  Regia Cotton.  8 balls=8 pairs of socks.  This was what I used recently for the sherbet socks.

 

5.  Lorna’s Laces (rainbow) and Fleece Artist (blue).  4 balls=2 pairs of socks.

6.  More Lorna’s Laces, with beads.  2 hanks + beads=1 pair of socks.

7.  Assorted and miscellaneous.  3 balls=2 pairs of socks.

The question now:  Which one shall I choose?  What do you all think?  Should I pick self-striping yarn (the easy route,), or venture out into stripes with the solid colors?  A solid pair with different-colored heels and toes?  Perhaps combine a solid with one of the handpaints in a Fair Isle or stranded pattern?

So many possibilities…

After five days of living in an igloo, we were amazed and delighted when our new furnace groaned to life around 4 p.m. yesterday. Its maiden voyage was a rough one, requiring the little-furnace-that-could to raise the temperature from a frigid 48 degrees (yes, that’s where it kind of permanently settled…which means it could have been worse, of course…although had you tried to tell me that on Friday I probably would have hung up on you) to a toasty 68 degrees.

You will never meet anyone so grateful to be in a home where the temperature is in the sixties. Comparatively speaking, I feel like I am on the isle of Oahu, basking in the sunshine on Waikiki and enjoying the “spirit of aloha.”

Pardon me for a moment while I summon Alex to fix me a Mai Tai with a miniature umbrella…

In practice, we were at the hotel for much of the past five days, but because of the animals’ needs and because we were unable to relocate all of our possessions, we were unable to completely abandon the house.

We all found this extremely inconvenient, except perhaps for Shelley, who enjoyed all the walking back and forth between the house and the hotel. And the subsequent sack-outs on the sofa in our suite.

A few tasty details from the furnace debacle:
1. The Paleozoic furnace was operating, we learned from our friendly Keyspan furnace professional, at a whopping 50% efficiency.

2. He also told us that there is a special place in hell for criminally neglectful sumbitches landlords who care so little about their property and their tenants that they fail to replace Paleozoic furnances operating at 50% efficiency.

3. When we asked him if there was a particular reason why the Paleozoic furnace died at that particular moment, he said, “Yeah, the same reason that that 114-year-old woman in Connecticut died a few weeks ago. She was old.”

4. The new furnace operates at over 90% efficiency. 90% efficiency, 100% satisfaction Chez Les Eskimaux!

5. It is warmer in this house than it ever has been. And I mean ever. This furnace just flat out has more juice. Go, little furnace! Do your stuff!

So I suppose that in the final analysis, this short-term cloud is bound to have a long-term silver lining. And yet…I still hope my landlord rots in hell.

Meanwhile, I took Wanda’s advice for getting out of the knitting doldrums and started a sock project:

Regia 4-Ply in red, black, and white. Faux-cable pattern over 60 stitches on US #1 needles. And highly portable.

And “Time” has not been out of mind. The lovely fit I spoke of formerly:

I have not yet ceased to be amazed that I got this part right!

How the sleeve is shaping up:

Upon consultation with my pals Kat and Kerry, it was decided that one central cable would be the most flattering sleeve solution.

And finally, a shot in which you can sort of see how the neck fits:

A woman with two-thirds of a sweater and central heating is a very happy woman indeed.

And last, but not least, many thanks to all who offered their support, commiseration, and warm thoughts during the Great Furnace Debacle of 2007.

I have been making progress on my Cherry Tree Hill socks. 

                                                       As you can see from the above picture, the first sock is done, and I have a good start on the second.  This yarn is gorgeous to work with, but it is so soft that I wonder how it will hold up when I actually wear these.  After all, it is merino, so I’m afraid of it pilling pretty badly.  I suppose only time will tell.

I followed the pattern pretty closely on these–the Twin Rib sock from Charlene Schurch’s Sensational Knitted Socks.  The only thing I changed was to work quite a few more rows of heel flap than she calls for.  Oh, and I changed the heel stitch heel flap to an eye-of-partridge (or eye-of-newt, as my dear sis would say) heel flap, just because I like the way it looks.

In other news, a few months ago I recklessly agreed to play the piano in a spring concert at my church.  Back then, it seemed as though spring would never come, and that I would never have to play pay the piper.  But now, April 29 is fast approaching, and I’m starting to get a little nervous.  I’m staring down thirty minutes of solo piano, in much the same way that one might stare down a gun barrel.

I’ll be playing this:

                          Bach’s Toccata in D-major (three movements–what was I thinking?)

And maybe this:

                           A waltz by Samuel Barber–beautiful and dissonant.

Among other things.

Oh, Lord.  I’m going to quit writing this post right now and go practice.