Knit Sisters

I have been reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and it has put me in a disturbingly apocalyptic mood. To be fair, it is an excellent book, very powerful…but be prepared. Soon, you’ll be seeing signs of the coming apocalypse everywhere.

Case in point: between McCarthy’s vision of a post-apocalyptic America, my own personal health insurance fiasco, the miserable prevalence of SUVs in our neighborhood alone, the burgeoning worldwide human population, and American stores stuffed to the rafters with pleather easy chairs, Sno-Globes, and underpants made out of petrochemicals, I have spent the last few days pretty thoroughly convinced that the human species will be extinct within a few generations.

And when have I ever been wrong? That’s right. Never.

Um, I can think of a couple of times. Like when you wouldn’t let me eat that groundhog I killed. You were WAY wrong that time. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Right or wrong, though, it’s been a dangerous frame of mind, not only because it has been very demoralizing, but also because I’m really just a hair’s breath away from spending my afternoons standing on the street in Harvard Square ranting about socialism.

See? Dangerous.

Like any good American, however, I’ve been distracted a bit from my role as “Prophet of Doom” by consumer goods, although I have eschewed the pleather and, heaven knows, the SUVs.

As far as I am concerned, this is the sock yarn dye-job to end all sock yarn dye jobs. I just love this yarn and I can’t wait to knit with it. And after all, when the apocalypse comes, we’re going to need warm wool socks, aren’t we? Preferably in attractive colors.

And who do we have to thank for this exquisite stuff?

Madeline Tosh. Yarn shown here in colorway Peony.

And of course, I have continued to knit my second Ice Queen, which I want to finish even if we are all going to go extinct. Because, look, even long term extinction does not relieve us of our immediate mandate to “look good, kick ass, and take names.”

Which, now that I think of it, would be hard to do while ranting about socialism on a street corner.

And then there’s Shelley. Nothing keeps you honest, grounded, and fully in the present like a dog. The other night, we were watching Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man together and Shelley was sleeping at my feet, as is her wont during home film screenings.

Those of you who have seen the film will certainly remember the scene of the two male grizzly bears fighting quite violently over a female. As soon as the fight commenced, Shelley sat bolt upright, ears at full mast, and stared intently at the television screen. She cocked her head to the left, then the right. Left again. Right again.

Then she looked at me as if to say, “Well, I’ll be—if you’ll pardon the expression—doggoned. How’d you get them miniature bears in that box?”

I said, “Shelley, Miss Puppy, the same species that got those miniature bears in that box are the authors of the coming apocalypse. And that’s just the awful truth.”

She looked at me quizzically and gave my hand an affectionate lick. Then she yawned and went back to sleep.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to begin blogging again, to the tune of twice a week.  Considering it is now the end of January and this is my first post of the month, we can all see how well that’s been working out for me. 

However, in my own defense, I do have to point out that here in northwest Missouri we have been having one hell of a winter.  Some uncharitable persons might think that unfriendly weather conditions could lead one to do more, rather than less, blogging, since one is effectively house-bound for days on end, but such persons have clearly never experienced a tough winter.  In point of fact, one spends a large proportion of time huddled on the couch (or in bed) in woolen garments and blankets, simply trying to keep warm and keep one’s spirits up:  no small task.  Unrelenting ice, snow, and bitter cold can be very lowering.

Because I live alone and can basically do whatever I want to with my living space, the area around my spot on the couch has been gradually filling up with yarn, fiber, pillows, napkins, remote controls, books, and other sundries, creating a sort of bulwark against the cold dark.  I fear that someday soon I will simply disappear into my nest and will have to be pulled out sometime in April, pasty-faced and blinking. 

But I digress.

I have been knitting (in my nest), and have been hard at work on Rumpelstiltskin, among other things.

                            (The observant among you will note evidence of the nest at the bottom of this picture.)

I am now close to the end of the second long side, about to turn the third corner with the edging.  Let me tell you, knitting on this edging has been a b****, like Ellen’s picot bind-off, only worse.  Cause there’s so much more of it, you see.  The only thing I can do is to attempt a Zen-like state of calm and acceptance while knitting on this thing.  Zen-like calm and acceptance do not come naturally to me.  I have more of a “flail around wildly while complaining and whining” approach to life.  It’s a gift.  Kind of a Protestant thing.

When I’m not practicing Zen-like calm and acceptance, I’m wondering whether I will ever, ever finish this damn thing, and whether, after all, it is really worth the candle. 

But I have a vision:  myself, in my winter nest, wrapped up in a lovely lace-weight mohair shawl, fortified against the cold, snow, and wind by the lovely work of my own hands.

Somebody come pull me out in April, would you?

From the Department of Superb Packaging:

My friend Andrew brought this back for us from Japan, where he spent two weeks over the academic break. I think it is brilliant, especially considering that the contents were Steam Cakes—a kind of Japanese Twinkies—and the English-language product copy on the wrapper gives you…absolutely no clue that you have just received a box of delicious Steam Cakes.

How refreshing that somewhere in this world there is still a commitment to preserving a sense of wonder and mystery! At least for English speakers.

On a more linguistic-philosophical note, I like to think that “Osaka is a town full of an interesting thing,” is not really a mistake, but rather a change of heart. I imagine the copy writer sitting at his desk, thinking about how many interesting things there are in Osaka, how the city is fairly bursting with interesting things. Bursting! He begins to write, “Osaka is a town full!…

Then he comes thudding back down to earth. He can actually only think of one interesting thing in Osaka. Crap.

“…of an interesting thing.”

I empathize. I have had the same experience with my dissertation chapters. “I have written a chapter full!…

Oh, crap.

“…of an interesting thing.”

Okay, I lied a little yesterday. I didn’t contact all the Democratic presidential candidates about my availability to work on the health care issue.

Only Hillary Clinton.

When I told Alex I had done this, he said, “You didn’t!”

“Oh yes I did,” I said.

He is now absolutely certain that a “Wacko Alert” has been placed on my FBI file. The FBI file I almost certainly have because of my romantic intrigue with a known Communist agitator during the waning years of the Cold War. Ah, those were good times, weren’t they? When we had just one big, monolithic enemy? How I long for those halcyon days again, those simple, happy times when we knew who to hate and why.

But I digress.

While I’ve been waiting for Hillary’s call, I have been busying myself with my dissertation and with Romi’s Ice Queen, a pattern with which I am obsessed.

This is my first Ice Queen, Kidsilk Haze and seed beads. I think it makes me look a great deal like Jackie O, don’t you? Just without the money. (Photo courtesy of SPR-Boston Photography Studio)

A side view:

I love the pattern, although that gorgeous picot bind-off is truly the bind-off that never ends.
There’s a song about that, isn’t there? Okay, all together now!

This is the bind-off that never ends,
It just goes on and on, my friends,
Some people started binding off
not knowing what it was,
Now they’ll continue binding off forever just because
This is the bind-off that never ends…

Oh, we could go on all night, couldn’t we?

My one slight regret is that the beads on this first one were such a close match with the yarn that they produced a—how shall we say?—well, subtle effect.

But I had a lot of beads left. So I started on a second Ice Queen:

A little higher contrast. Same materials, different yarn color.

Thanks for the great pattern, Romi! You definitely brightened up my bleak midwinter with your gorgeous design. And while Ice Queen is beautiful, it is also surprisingly practical; I’ve worn mine nearly every day since I finished it.

Patterns like this make me especially glad that I can knit.

Happy New Year everyone! A bit belatedly, I know, but you are now talking to someone with two completed dissertation chapters and a third in gestation, but who is now, I’m afraid, officially a “fallen-away blogger.”

Better blogging times are coming, Lord, we just don’t know quite when…

Meanwhile, my university welcomed me to 2008 with some warm, fuzzy, and deeply American news: they would be cutting off my health insurance, in spite of the fact that I am now, and have been for the past five and a half years, a graduate student in good standing at Berkeley who has always been judged by my department to be making what they call “good progress” (towards what exactly is a larger philosophical question that shall not be addressed here).

The precise details of this health insurance debacle are, as all things with this “industry,” byzantine, maddening, and very difficult to convey. I shall attempt, nonetheless, to summarize: in order to finish a Ph.D. at Berkeley in any field that requires research away from campus (and that would be, ahem, many), a student will—for bureaucratic purposes and to save her department big, big cashola—be placed on what is called “withdrawn” status for two semesters while she is away. During this time, she has to buy her health insurance through the university as a separate fee, which costs her approximately $3000 for the year.

Since her stipend is somewhere between $15,000 and $18,000 per year (pre-tax), this poses a serious financial “challenge,” but one that can be surmounted by eating nails for a couple of months and never turning the heat above 50 degrees.

So far, so good!

You with me? Now, right before the student gets her Ph.D., she spends ANOTHER semester on what is called “filing fee” status, another bureaucratic category into which she is placed, like it or not. Under this status, she is also required to buy her own health insurance.

Here’s where things go off the rails. The insurance company that “serves” the university has made a rule that a student may only buy into health insurance through the university for two semesters. But this is in the extremely fine print, of course.

Those of you keeping score at home may have already realized that to finish the program the student has to buy health insurance for three semesters.

Folks, with “service” like this, who needs enemies?

I noticed this rule on January 14th, one day before my health insurance from last semester ran out. So I gave the folks out in California a friendly call to investigate.

Me: So I read this rule about the two semesters on your website and I’m calling because I wondered if I was reading that right.

Insurance Elf: Yes, you are.

Me: Well, that’s funny because my program—and I’m guessing many others—puts a girl on this kind of status for THREE semesters, not two.

Insurance Elf: Well, I’m sorry, but we have been enforcing the two semester rule.

Me: May I ask why?

Insurance Elf: We did a study and we discovered that the group of students who buy insurance while they are on withdrawn or filing fee status is small, but it is a high claims group. We needed to minimize our losses.

Me: (Pause to take in the wildly inhumane magnitude of this statement and to tear out a chunk of my own hair) So what do you suggest I do for health insurance then, Insurance Elf?

Insurance Elf: There are plenty of outside plans you can buy as an individual.

Me: Dude, I have researched those “plans” in the past. They have terms like, say, $2000 deductibles. You take a financially marginal person and give her insurance with a $2000 deductible and you have given her nothing but disaster insurance. There isn’t any “health care” about it. That’s just insurance so that you won’t have to eat mealworms and live in a refrigerator box for the rest of your life if you fall on the ice and break your arm. You can’t go to the doctor unless it is clearly a matter of your imminent death. You got mild asthma? Go home and f*cking gasp, little friend.

Insurance Elf: Well, we do enforce the two semester rule.

Me: I think you’ll burn in hell for this.

Actually, I didn’t tell the Insurance Elf she’d burn in hell. But I think she will.

So at the moment I have the disaster-only insurance. There is a chance that the insurance elves will make an exception in my case, but while they deliberate, I have to have some kind of coverage. (Revisit specter of a lifelong diet of mealworms and a refrigerator box home.) And the coverage can’t lapse or the health “care” industry will shaft me on the old pre-existing condition clause.

Now, without boring you with all the ins-and-outs of this matter, I can assure you that one way or another this will be resolved by February 15th such that I can have usable health insurance. But only because I am married. That is, either Berkeley will relent, or I can get onto Alex’s insurance.

So this isn’t really about me, even though my situation is all, all, all wrong.

This is about a broken, inhumane, indecent health “care” system that has been turned over to rapacious businessmen who prey on people who need medical attention and take decisions about health, healing, and well-being out of the hands of doctors and nurses and place it into the hands of people who only want to make a buck.

This is wrong. It’s wrong that companies are “minimizing losses” by making it impossible in practice for people to go to the doctor when they are sick or to get their medical care covered if they do. It’s wrong that we have so many people who are completely uninsured and so many who are underinsured and therefore in constant danger of financial ruin.

It’s wrong in a country where we have so much money and so many resources that we would allow this to go on. If ever a thing were immoral, this is.

I’ve been in such a toot about this that I have contacted all the major Democratic presidential candidates to offer my services to help them sort out this health care nightmare. I have told them that I will get my Ph.D. in December and will be available—just in time!—in January.

Unaccountably, none of them have had their people get back to me.

Everybody must be at lunch.

Or on the phone. Arguing with their insurance companies.

Last week we here in the Midwest had our own bad storm, but instead of snow, what we got was ice.  It was bad, bad, bad.

Here are my pictures of the aftermath.

                                                              This gives you a good idea of the amount of ice that was on every branch and twig.

                                   The ice weighing down the trees.

                                   The half of a tree that came down on my roof.

                                     A side view.

                                                          The tree split right at the base.

                                      The pine tree in my side yard weighted down by ice.

                                                         The elm in my back yard.

I wish you all a wonderful holiday season, full of joy and happiness and free from ice.

I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that in my blog-absence, I have nearly finished another chapter of my dissertation. And if you are not pleased, I gotta tell you: I am.

Looks like we’re on track to have a mighty white Christmas here in the Commonwealth:

Photographic evidence, in case you think I’m just whistling Dixie. This is my backyard. And no, that apple tree does not fork right where it comes out of the ground. Normally.

Ain’t no way, no how all that snow is gonna melt in four days. We are just walled in, people. We’ve had three big snowfalls in the last week. Lord help us, this is getting to be like Antarctica in the winter, but with about 45 extra minutes of sunlight a day. And praise be for small sunlight favors!

You know how the “Polar Powers That Be” give a girl an extensive battery of mental health testing before she winters over in Antarctica, to make sure she is robust and fit enough not to go stark raving mad midway through the long, dark, cold winter ordeal and start shooting up blameless Adélie penguins while waving around a bottle of Sailor Jerry spiced rum and screaming about how global warming is a liberal conspiracy?

Yeah, well, I’m going to recommend to the Governor of the Commonwealth that the same battery of tests be given to anyone who wants to live in Massachusetts. Especially if they are coming most recently from California.

Shelley stalks snow birds in the japonica. All is merry and bright for the large predator.

I have no idea what you are talking about. I am a lady and I have crossed my paws to prove it.

I’ve actually done tons of knitting, but it is all a holiday secret, so I’m afraid no photos are forthcoming.

In lieu, I give you the Balerstein Christmas tree…

…complete with a dog rummaging through the packages in hopes of finding a pig ear or a large bone.

Happy winter holidays, everyone—and I mean whatever you may choose to celebrate to ward off the bleakness of December, even if it’s just the fact that you have a decent snow shovel, a huge pile of wool, and a working furnace. Stay warm, jingle your bells, and, of course, good luck with your own cadre of difficult people!

This is, after all, a time for family to gather ’round.

Maybe it was the comforting and creative turkey recipes you all sent, or perhaps it was five straight days rest (okay, there was that madcap codeine run to Harvard Square yesterday, but that is a nutty story of narcotics hi-jinks for another day), but I am thrilled, thrilled (!) to report that I was able to walk the dog for her usual three miles this morning.

And I am still awake to talk about it!

She, however, is fast asleep.

Don’t wake me, monkey.

You might think I’m kind of making a lot of a case of bronchitis, and I suppose it would appear that way if you didn’t know that seven years ago when I still lived in NYC, I came down with a case of bronchitis at the end of October, but I kept going to work, to the gym, to Halloween parties…I just kept up my usual schedule, albeit while hacking and coughing up alveoli everywhere I went. By November 2nd, I couldn’t walk around the block. From then until early December, I did not leave my apartment.

By this I mean I did not even go down the hall.

Long story short, the virus caused lung inflammation, I lost half my lung capacity, at the worst of it I could not raise my arms above my head because that movement compressed my lungs too much for me to breathe, and a good day was when I could sit up in bed for an hour or two. I didn’t resume anything resembling a normal schedule for six months. As ailments go, the excruciatingly slow progress of this was maddeningly like something out of the 19th century, except that I was not sent to “take the waters” for six months. Which was a shame.

At the time, the pulmonologist gave me a two-year horizon for full recovery and I have minor, but apparently permanent lung damage.

What was my mistake? I didn’t respect the virus. I didn’t understand that I was dealing with the Godfather of Viruses. By the time I got the picture, the Godfather of Viruses was saying, “You come here and ask me to leave you alone, but you don’t show respect, you don’t show friendship.”

That’s when you know you’re gonna get whacked.

I haven’t had bronchitis in the intervening seven years (thanks be to God!) and this virus seems far less virulent than the one I had in 2000, but then again, I know now. I respect the virus, children. I don’t push my luck. I don’t go out in public coughing and hacking and flipping off the virus in a whole variety of ways that makes it very, very angry. Because I know what happens.

You end up as a character in The Magic Mountain.

So that’s why bronchitis is a big, ole, hairy deal Chez Mad Dog. That’s why we’re hunkering down and knitting The Sick Socks and doing crossword puzzles.

I’m also making the Superior Ruffled Pullover, which looks like this so far:

If you don’t knit, this yarn will make you want to learn. 70% cashmere, 30% silk. Superior. Ask for it at your LYS.

And I’m slowly re-entering the world. But this time, I’m showing respect.

Today is Sarah’s birthday, so if you can leave her a birthday greeting in the comments, I’d be much obliged.

I’m feeling more than a little sad because Sarah (and my parents) were supposed to be here today—and earlier this week for Thanksgiving—but low-grade tragedy struck when both Alex and I got a bad case of viral bronchitis and were deemed “unsuited to host and roast” by the medical authorities.

It’s no joke, dudes. There is something powerful wrong with my monkeys.

Even more tragically, our last foray into the outer world involved buying a 16-lb. turkey in anticipation of a feast which never happened. In the event, we actually cooked the bird lest it go bad, producing—since neither of us has any appetite whatsoever—nearly 16 lbs. of leftovers.

If you have any great recipes for leftover turkey, bring ’em on!

In knitting news, I have finished Rogue (remember Rogue, from, oh, a year and a half ago or so?), but I am waiting to model her on the blog until such time as I feel more spry. In spite of our bronchial woes, I am delighted with the sweater, which is all the more special because my sister spun the yarn for it.

This is big bananas, people. Stay tuned for photos.

And did I mention that this sweater fits and is attractive? Unlike, ahem, some creations.

Meanwhile, I have been knitting what we officially refer to as The Sick Socks:

This is about all I can handle right now. Trekking. Stockinette. Watching the colors change. Fun for the feeble-minded.

Oh, and since we’re discussing socks, I also made an elegant pair for Nasser from a lovely charcoal grey skein of Alpaca Sox, but he came and got them before I could snap a photo and whisked them away to London where he is wearing them today to do a reading in a friend’s wedding. I am quite honored to know that one of my creations is a world traveller and the chosen sock for a special occasion.

Here in the Commonwealth, meanwhile, we’ve got bronchitis and a frozen birdbath. So much to be thankful for!

Some of you have expressed concern that the blog posts have been mighty scarce these past few weeks. Thank you for you notes, all of you. There is an explanation for this: Sarah is very involved with some family issues that are consuming of her time and energy and I am increasingly in what I call Dissertation Mole Mode.

What this means is that on all days when my lungs aren’t kicking me to the curb, I get up very early, walk the dog, and then for the next seven to eight hours, I employ the secret strategy used by successful writers everywhere.

I put my butt in a chair.

And I write. This is very satisfying work, but I have to admit that at the end of it, I am not generally inclined to write more. Even about knitting. And life. In fact, at the end of the day, I got nothing left. Nothing left for nothing. Everything else has gotten pared back to get this sucker done—social life, knitting, blogging… I have gone to ground; I am the Dissertation Mole.

So bear with us. We’ll do what we can in the meantime.

For all of our American readers, we hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving.

And now, about those turkey recipes… Whaddya got for me?