Avoidance

I can’t even tell you how hard I am working at avoidance today. The Represent Event (I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it) is four days away and I am having second thoughts. I am freaking out. I am deeply worried. I phoned Jayme-the-wonder-publicist this morning and told her that I wasn’t coming. That I’d thought it over and it looked like just bags of fun…but that I was afraid I was going to have to stay here. Good luck though.

I was only half kidding. I’m still writing a speech for that evening (giving a speech to this many people makes me so nervous that I can’t hardly type. What the hell were we thinking…750 knitters?) I totally have no pants. How does this always come down to pants? I would love to have a significant day in my life not marked by the search for pants and a necessary hard look at my arse. I swear. One of these times I am just going to wear a pair of jeans. I am. Maybe this time. Jeans and a tee shirt and a sweater and the whole New York scene can bite me. (May we please have a moment to fully embrace the irony that it may be an appearance at the FASHION Institute that finally pushes me to revert to my usual unkempt appearance?) My hair is….well. It’s my hair. The unco-operativeness and inability to control it is implied. I have to go shopping for a belt so my pants (if I do wear jeans) don’t fall down as I walk to the stage…my bra is no longer lifting, never mind separating and I am just waiting now to get a huge and obvious pimple on my forehead to round out my dread.

Naturally, since I need to write a speech, get a haircut, buy pants, a belt and a bra, pack and organize the daylights out of the family and the house so they can keep it together while I’m gone all before Wednesday…

I’m knitting. (I finished the Bohus Guld. It’s blocked and beautiful and I love it. It fits like I had dreamed and it’s the best thing I own right now. I’d show you pictures but it’s snowing today and too wet to go out and too dark to take pictures inside. Tomorrow, if the weather is better.) The gansey was pulled from its resting place and I worked on it until I came to the place where I have to begin the neckhole.

Ganseyfronttoneck1903

I need to stop here and hold it up to Joe and measure the width and depth of his neck. This gansey will have saddle shoulders, so I need now to decide what the centre motif of the sleeves will be, since that’s what will run across the top of the shoulder. However wide that is, I subtract it from the front and back and that messes with my neckhole. Plus, Joe told me last night that he doesn’t want the neck too big – or too small. That he really wants the neck exactly right. That odd necks really bug him. He wondered what he should do if he didn’t like the neck. Should he tell me? Could I take it out and knit it again if it was too big or too small or too wide or too deep?

Ganseydet1903

I stared.

Seriously. I stared some more. I’ve lock washed this fleece. Then I carded it all. Then I spun it all into singles, then I plied it into dk weight three ply (THREE PLY) then skeined it, I washed it to set the twist, I wound it into balls and I started knitting, designing and researching a traditional gansey on the freakin’ fly. It is taking forever. It is a bucket of work. It is an homage to my stinking love for him.

What should he do if he doesn’t like the neck when I’m done?

I chose my words very carefully, to be sure that I was understood.

“What you should do Joe, if the neck is not right when I am finished knitting this gansey…is Pretend. Fake it. Wear it every day for the rest of your life with pride and humility and never speak, for one second of any moment you have left on this earth, of any dissatisfaction you might have, in any way, with your HAND SPUN, HAND KNIT GANSEY.”

Honestly.



PS: New stuff has been added to the
Represent page. New tour guides, a sit and knit in a restaurant to kill time between events…a free sock pattern, a party in Australia (without me. Bummer.) and an address to mail hats to for the Pittsburgh event and the Victoria event.)

In addition to all of that? Jayme-the-wonder-publicist has arranged with the
craft yarn council for everyone who comes to the event in NYC to get a bag with yarn and needles to knit squares for Warm Up America. I hear it’s wool. This just keeps getting better. Free yarn. Nice one Jayme.