Knit Sisters

On Tuesday night Rob and I had a long talk.  Wednesday morning I received these

 

at work.  There are sixteen blooms in all, one for every year of our marriage.  This sort of thing is really not what I would typically think of as being in character for him.  He is trying very, very hard, folks, and it’s hard not to fall in love all over again with a man who is willing to try that hard.  The card that came with the flowers (although I will not reveal its contents in such a public forum), touched me almost as much as the flowers themselves.  Maybe more.

Well.  Onward.

I have not yet fully revealed the extent of my acquisitiveness at the Fiber Retreat.  The truth is, I drove away having purchased this:

A Kromski Symphony double treadle spinning wheel, with a mahogany finish.  It included its own matching tensioned lazy Kate, which you can see there in the corner of the picture, and three matching bobbins.

Isn’t she a beauty?

 

She also came with an instructional video,

which so far I have been unable to watch because I no longer have a VCR.

When I first started spinning, I learned that it’s pretty common among serious spinners to have more than one wheel.  In fact, it’s not that uncommon to have many wheels.  (Like one in every room of the house.)  I pooh-poohed this habit, thinking “Why in the world would anyone need to have more than one spinning wheel?” 

Now it makes perfect sense to me.  You absolutely need more than one wheel.  My new Symphony has both a double drive and Scotch tension.  The Ashford Joy has only Scotch tension.  The Symphony can be fitted with a bulky-weight flyer and a lace-weight flyer.  The Ashford has just one flyer that fits it.  The Symphony has larger bobbins and more open flyer hooks than the Joy.  The Symphony is a gorgeous piece of (fairly) permanent furniture, and the Joy can be easily packed up and carried along for the spinner on the go.

Perhaps most importantly, this new wheel just goes and goes and goes with just a few treadles.  She spins like buttah.

Admit it.  You need a new wheel yourself, don’t you?  Go ahead.  Indulge yourself.  You have my permission.

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.”

Did anyone else break down this weekend and “prepare for glory” by enjoying a screening of 300, the exciting action film the Rolling Stone aptly observed would appeal to “guys of all sexes and ages”?

And how right they were!

I finished Minnie’s back over the weekend too. Not that the Spartans would care.

To my mind, the best scene was when the Spartans were finishing off various unfortunate Persians—felled in battle, doncha know?—while their leader, King Leonidas, munched on an apple. It is entirely unclear where he got that apple; there were no apples in the ravaged landscape! There were no apple orchards on the fields of glory!

I can only conclude that his wife, Queen Gorgo, packed him a bag lunch before he set out. He probably had a juice box in there too and a box of animal crackers, but he was too embarrassed to eat them in front of the guys.

Then there was the awful scene where Theron forces himself upon Gorgo, all the while hissing, “This will not be over quickly…and you will not enjoy it.”

Funny thing was, that sounded SO familiar. Then I remembered: that was what they told us at our graduate school orientation meeting.

Okay, they tried to dress up that last bit in a lot of flowery verbiage about how we would be enriched by graduate school just as graduate school would be enriched by us and so on and so forth. But really? This will not be over quickly. And you will not enjoy it.

Tonight we bead in hell!!!

On a lovely day during the fall of my first year, I had a chat with a South African friend from the German Literature Program who was at that time a fourth- or fifth-year graduate student. I remember this part with exquisite clarity: she said, cheerfully, “Oh, well, being in graduate school is very, very bad for your health. People gain a lot of weight, they get depressed, their skin loses its glow. Very bad. Very bad indeed!”

I was horrified. And then I proceeded to gain weight, get depressed, and develop at least one clinical skin condition related to stress. The good news, though, is that now I’m losing all that weight again because I’m so traumatized that I can barely eat anything.

The stress giveth and the stress taketh away. Blessed be the name of the stress.

I expect to finish this degree in six years total. Just for scale, the average in my department is still, I believe, eight years. I myself just have to finish sooner so that graduate school doesn’t kill me.

You think I’m joking.

Before I started I could not have known the exact parameters of why it would be so hard to go back to academic grad school in my mid-thirties. Some things I knew: that my income would be cut to a quarter of what I had earned before. That I would probably have to live with housemates after living alone for a decade. That there would be a lot of work.

What I didn’t, and maybe couldn’t, foresee was what the effect of those conditions would be over a sustained period. For instance, I failed to realize that I would be essentially unable to make any friends my own age, unless they were also graduate students, because I would no longer be able to afford the opera, the theater, the ballet, the restaurants, the wine, the lift tickets, the airfare…all the things that people my age, particularly those with careers and no children, would be buying and doing with their free time. This might have been different had I stayed in New York, where people knew me from my “previous life” and were already invested in me as a friend and would have had patience with, say, endless perambulations around Central Park (100% free!). But I was not in New York. I was in Berkeley, the Land of Milk and Organic Honey.

And as Townes van Zandt once sang, “If you want good friends, it’s gonna cost ya!”

I failed to realize that living with housemates would make me feel like I had no real home. I vastly underestimated how excruciating that “homelessness” would feel to me at this point in my life.

I failed to realize how invisible I would feel once I was no longer an authority figure in my own right, once no one particularly saw me as an expert any more. Once I had lost access to the sure-footedness and the accoutrements of true adulthood as I had known it.

Yes, I crocheted last week. But I swear it didn’t mean anything to me!

There have been stretches of the past four and a half years characterized by what I can only describe as grinding, unrelenting misery. Not unhappiness. Misery.

And yet. And yet! This weekend I finished the first draft of the first chapter of my dissertation. It’s far from perfect, of course, but I used my sources to show some things that no historian has ever showed before. I nailed some interesting arguments. Nailed them! And best of all, I can see the immense intellectual progress I’ve made from the beginning of this adventure to now. And I gotta tell you, there’s nothing so exhilarating. Absolutely nothing. Not to me anyway.

This, this moment, is why I’ve hung on like a pit-bull in a fight.

Even now, this will not be over quickly. But maybe I’ve finally gotten to the part where there will be at least a few shreds of glory. No Spartan was ever more prepared.

Naturally, I did not come home empty-handed from the fiber retreat.  There was a large room devoted to vendors, all of them Missouri fiber producers and retailers.  After all, what’s a fiber festival without a chance to spend some of your hard-earned cash?

So, let’s address the purchases, shall we?

1.  Four ounces of gray wool and silk.  This stuff is supremely fluffy, and I have it on the wheel right now.

                                                           A note:  this was really hard to get a good picture of.  You’ll have to sort of use your imagination, I guess.

2.  One pound of mohair and silk from Chris Hunsburger (the lady I took the mohair class from on Saturday afternoon).  This is her own naturally-colored mohair, blended with green and teal silk noil.  I just fell right in love with this stuff, and, as with all her custom blends, when it’s gone, it’s gone.  So I had to buy a full pound, see? 

                                                Look at the shine on this!  Gorgeous.

3.  Three different small amounts of alpaca roving from a southern Missouri producer.  I bought these just to play around with a bit, maybe do a bit of blending on my small combs.  The price was really right, and even though they are what she calls “seconds,” the quality is still great–better than what you might find in most commercial alpaca “firsts.”

 

4.  One pound of merino/silk blends in four different colorways.  I really like these pre-blended rovings in these kind of streaky (for lack of a better word) colorways.  I bought two “pairs,” with the idea of plying them together for added richness of color. 

 

                                     You can get a little bit of an idea of how they will look by twisting the rovings together.

5.  Eight ounces of merino/mohair blend.  Obviously, I bought this with the same idea in mind.  I really just fell in love with the darker of the two colorways, and then looked for something that would coordinate.  I may still decide to ply these separately, though.

 

That’s the lot.  All in all, I think I was pretty restrained, don’t you?

The view from the back door, circa 5:30 p.m.

The view from the side window, circa 5:45 p.m.

Anybody else enjoying spring in this precise fashion today?

But listen, I gotta run! I’m recording that hit tune I Love Boston in the Springtime this evening with my all-New-England band, “Robert Frost and the Frozen Buds,” and I have to find my snowboots before I go out.

My fourth and last class over the weekend at the Fiber Retreat was a three-hour class on Sunday morning with the lovely and talented Melissa Leapman,

 

entitled Full-Fashioned and Fabulous.  Although purportedly a class about fully-fashioned decreases and how to use them in your knitting, this workshop was really all about design and how to make your knitting fit and flatter.  As such, I found it very inspiring.

We got to see several of Melissa’s beautiful sweaters up close and personal, like this one from Hot Knits,

 

one of my favorite knitting pattern books.  I have actually made two sweaters out of this book, largely as written, which is of course rare for me.  One of those sweaters is the one pictured above, although I didn’t make it in the prescribed yarn, because (let’s face it) I never do.

We learned all about using matching decreases to shape sweaters, and how to place them in from the edge of the pieces to create flattering lines.  Several of the sweaters she showed us had self-finishing necklines that utilized fully-fashioned decreases, and we knit several small swatches to practice this technique on different knit fabrics:  cables, lace, and texture.

Melissa also showed us two sweaters that she had designed (including the red one above) that utilize fully-fashioned decreases and increases as a design element–moving cables or ribs around on the fabric to create flattering design lines.

Very inspiring and thought-provoking for a nascent designer like myself.

In all, I got some really great stuff out of this class, as well as the three spinning classes I took at the retreat.

Plus, I got to chat a bit with my friend Shelda.

                              Seen here wearing her beautiful cotton shoulder shawl (or is that a shawlette, Shelda?) with beaded fringe.

Anybody up for next year?

Although Alex has been complaining bitterly for the past two mornings about “having to get up in the middle of the night,” I am delighted by the recent spring forward. It’s light until almost 7 p.m., folks, and that just gives a girl’s spirits a boost.

Plus, I’m a morning person and a semi-closeted Calvinist and if we’re getting up at what used to be 5:30 a.m., well, I’m certain it will make us healthy, wealthy, and wise!

It is only fair to note here that in spite of my general loathing of Ben Franklin, who I consider to be one of history’s greatest hypocrites, I nonetheless never miss an opportunity to goad Alex with one of Franklin’s many moralistic, Puritanical dictums. Alex says (and he is right) that the problem with Franklin was that he felt free to opine about how others should live their lives, meanwhile putting his, ahem, dictum wherever he pleased.

Poor Richard, my *ss.

But back to the topic of more light. It fills me with a sense of well-being to be able to take Shelley on a walk in the daylight after an early dinner.

Afterwards, I am known to enjoy a heavy gnawing session.

And these feelings of well-being, however fleeting, are a very good thing indeed because while my sister, who couldn’t have deserved it more, was having a lovely time at the fiber retreat this weekend, I was knitting Minnie,

writing my dissertation, a fighting a losing battle with my guts.

By Sunday evening, having been bested by my own intestines, I decided to give up food for Lent.

You’d be amazed how much time it frees up when you basically stop eating. I’ve never been so productive in my life.

Feast yer eyes on them beads…

But all kidding aside, dear readers, I realize that this is hardly a sustainable solution to the problem of temperamental guts. And since I know some of you will express concern, I hasten to add that I am actually eating, just limited amounts of very plain things. And the less I eat, the better I feel.

In the meantime, however, I realized—thanks largely to my friend Emily, who begged me to “do the right thing”—that my resistance to being violated by Dr. F. and her little camera wasn’t futile, but it was stupid.

So I scheduled the colonoscopy, recalling that Dr. F. said it was, “no big deal.”

It’s gonna be a big deal. But there are deals and there are deals, if you know what I’m sayin’.

Gratuitous close-up of my green beads.

Here’s the thing: Dr. F., who I admire and trust implicitly, thinks that she won’t find anything alarming when she roots around in there with her little camera. She’s probably right, and her professional opinion certainly makes me feel better about all of this.

You know what they say in medicine: if you hear hoofbeats in the hall, don’t go lookin’ for zebras.

In my case, what we’re probably dealing with is horses, but you can’t know that it isn’t zebras unless you submit to the camera. Ain’t life grand?

What I haven’t yet said is that my friend Mara died of colon cancer at the age of thirty-three. It was completely untoward, so statistically improbable that it bordered on impossible, but nonetheless, there it was. Because no one, including her doctors, expected zebras, they didn’t diagnose her cancer until it had metastasized and it was too late to save her.

So am I scared? Is the Pope Catholic? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? You bet your boots.

But I think I’m going to be all right. And I know if Mara were here, she’d give me a swift, good-natured kick for ever hesitating.

I had a lovely time at the Missouri Fiber Retreat this weekend, and came home having learned lots of new things, energized to start spinning like a fiend and inspired to work on my own knitting designs.

I took four classes over the weekend, three of them spinning classes, and one a design class with the keynote speaker, Melissa Leapman.

My first class on Friday afternoon was a class in spinning “designer” yarn (or as spinners refer to it, lumpy bumpy yarn) out of Lincoln wool.  Our teacher gave us a bag of naturally-colored Lincoln locks,

which we teased apart by hand, spun into a highly textured single, and then plied back onto itself.

                                        My neighbor and new-found friend Andrea’s lumpy yarn.

                                                      My own lumpy Lincoln yarn, not quite as highly textural as Andrea’s, but still pretty, I think.

Next stop:  Saturday morning and a class in spinning with angora bunny wool. 

I ended up not taking too many photos during this class, just because I was so busy trying to spin at least a little bit of each of the sample fibers our instructor passed out.  She gave us German, French, and English angora to spin, which we spun straight and unblended with anything else, and I also experimented a little bit with blending some German angora with Columbia wool on my handheld combs.

                                                      My mini-skein of German angora.

Saturday afternoon:  spinning three designer yarns with the lovely and talented Chris Hunsburger,

                                                               who happens to live up toward my neck of the woods, I’m proud to say.

Our first yarn was a lumpy bumpy mohair in much the same vein as the lumpy bumpy Lincoln of the day before.

Then we used the dyed mohair locks to make a corespun yarn, a technique in which you use a core yarn or thread and let the teased locks grab onto and wrap around the core.  There are endless possibilities with this technique, including using a commercial yarn as the core and letting some of the base yarn show through the wrapping fiber.

 

Our third yarn of the afternoon was a mohair boucle, a very, very cool technique which I had never experimented with before.   

Very cool, but also very labor-intensive.  First you have to spin the mohair singles.  Then you ply that single with a commercial thread (or yarn), letting the mohair spiral around the thread–putting tension only on the thread as you ply.  Every time you ply a little bit, you stop and scootch the mohair down on the thread, creating those little loops.  So you ply, stop, scootch, ply, stop, scootch.  Then, you ply the whole shebang with the commercial thread again, locking those little loopies into place. 

I think you can see that I won’t be making this particular yarn every day.

Coming Wednesday:  my class with knitwear designer Melissa Leapman.

The first 120 of approximately 720 beads have been painstakingly knitted into the bodice of the sweater:

Many observers have generously commented on their delightful effect…

…but no one could be more pleased with my beading than…me.

Minnie, in her full glory:

As you can see, the beads are a subtler touch when you can see the whole sweater. And there is something about Minnie, perhaps her light color, perhaps her little slubs, perhaps her spring-green beads, that gives me hope that spring will be here.

In spite of the fact that it is seven degrees here with a minus thirteen windchill.

Once upon a time, a young man met a girl.  He was young; she was younger.  They became friends.  Some time later, they became lovers.  Two years later, they were married.

They lived happily together for five years.  They decided the time was right to have a child, and so she became pregnant.  The young woman loved being pregnant, cherishing that time as something that might not come around again.  When the baby was born, though, she foundered.  The depression of her younger years plagued her once again.

The child grew and seemed to thrive.  But when he was about three, it was clear that something was not quite right:  he was not quite as other children were.  The man and woman, now Mama and Papa, strove to know what was right to do and to do it.

The family moved, but they couldn’t leave their troubles behind.  The little boy grew, and went to school.  Life became harder and more anxious for him, and his Mama and Papa fought and struggled and at times cried bitter tears.  For a time, they separated and lived apart.

They came together again, though, and moved again, seeking support and peace.  The woman fought back her depression over and over.  The child visited doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists, seeking help.  The man worked hard to keep his little family afloat, fighting to love his life.

One day, late in the afternoon, after sixteen years together, the woman told her man that she believed that they should separate once again.  She moved away.  Now she lives in a small apartment across town.  She is slowly moving her things out of their home, and he is slowly making their home, his home.  Their son, who perhaps is not the child they ordered but is the child they love, struggles to adapt.

 

Rob and I separated almost a month ago.  I’ve not written about this on the blog because I’ve been unsure about how to write about it without seeming maudlin, or bitter, or self-pitying, or blaming–because I’m not really any of those things, and then again, at times I’m all of those things.

I do know that I’m more at peace, more myself, than I’ve been in a long while.  Harvey has suffered a setback because of our separation, and I feel a certain amount of guilt about that.  But I also feel that my access to joy, if not joy itself yet, has returned. 

These days I’m memorizing this poem, and if my road is still full of fallen branches and stones, I can sense those stars burning overhead.