Maybe Cloning

Home again, home again. I wonder how many times I’ve typed that over the years.  It’s a miracle I’ve never followed it with jiggity-jig, which is absolutely what I’m thinking. (This is the exact moment when one of you scans the archives and comes up with sixty-three times I’ve followed it with exactly that, not a one of them I’ll recall.) These last few weeks, I’m bucking the feeling that as I do all the right things, I’m in all the wrong places. This feeling was summed up on Wednesday morning as I missed the Bainbridge Ferry by about 20 seconds – despite careful planning and what should have been a foolproof plan.

I stood there on the dock, watching it sail off, and thought to myself “Well, that’s about right” and sat down to knit until the next one came, mostly content. I was on my way back from Port Ludlow.  After realizing that Susan’s funeral was going to be held during the retreat we just had there, I’d decided to go anyway. Actually, I hadn’t as much decided as I’d realized that there was just no way I could be anywhere else. The retreats we host are pretty tiny, and there’s only three a year, and there’s just no way to change when they are only a few weeks out.  It was difficult to see the family load up and head for Ottawa while I got on a plane for Seattle, we all felt bad about it, but every time I felt like I was in the wrong spot at the wrong time, I reminded myself that I was of service to Susan when she was alive, and that meant a lot more to her than my attendance at a service.  (It has been my experience thus far that other than in your imagination, dead people really don’t hold you to account much.)  It turns out that it’s not as much that I’m in the wrong spots – it’s more that I can’t seem to be in two places at once.

The rest of the week passed in a blur. The retreat was super busy, with Debbi welcoming a grandchild just days before we gathered there, and then it turning out that she actually was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and having to go home a little early.  (I know she wished she could be in two places as well.) I did conference calls for the Bike Rally on my lunch breaks, I answered email between class and evening events. I caught a break when a crazy winter storm whirled through Toronto on the weekend, cancelling the first training ride of the year – and relieving the feeling of being in the wrong place when I couldn’t attend it. Thursday exploded in a jet lagged blur- trying to get all caught up, and yesterday… technically I don’t remember anything about yesterday except I ran out of time to do everything on my do-do list and dinner was a salad with mint. That’s all I’ve got.

Little Elliot’s first birthday party is here tomorrow. I was in Texas two weeks back on his actual first birthday. I sort of felt like I was in the wrong place that time, but it was really the right thing to go to the fabulous DFW Fiber Fest and make up deserting the year before, though I did feel a little pang when the pictures of the birthday boy arrived on my phone.  Thankfully, our little guy is blithely unaware of the calendar, so we shifted it so I could be here for the big celebration. I’ve been pushing hard all week to get his birthday sweater finished, and I can admit today that I’m not going to make it. This hasn’t stopped me from trying, inexplicably.

Pretty, isn’t it? It’s Hearst, and the yarn is Alpha B Yarn “Kiwi B”, an Australian Polworth that she dyed just for one of the Strung Along retreats a few years ago. The colourway’s named for the co-ordinates of Port Ludlow. (If anyone’s coming out to Knot Another Fiber Festival next weekend, she’ll be there I think.  I also think there’s a few spots in one of my classes, the lecture one – Knit Smart. Fun and useful, I promise.)

Today, I should have been at the rescheduled first training ride, but I woke up with tons to do, a birthday cake to bake, a backache, and the absolute inability (emotionally speaking) to push my road bike over the snow piled up by the garden gate. Maybe if I did have a clone I’d be willing to send her out into the cold to ride, but as long as it’s me there’s just no way.  I’ll wait for the temperatures to at least be double digits before I get out there.

If you need me, I’ll be here, more or less, baking cake, answering email, looking wistfully at my bike and my knitting, thinking that this would all go a lot better if there was two of me. Peace out.

At the End(s)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

After Years of Failure, Knitter Proves That She Can Be Taught

PORT LUDLOW, Washington, April 13th, 2018

In a Stunning reversal absolutely nobody was expecting, this morning Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, upon finishing her Russell Street shawl-scarf thing, had only fourteen ends to weave in, out of a total of about fifty-eight (58) for this project.

“I can’t even explain it” the knitter said, while looking visibly pleased with herself. “Everybody talks about how they’re going weave in the ends as they go along, but I actually did!”

As told to this reporter, at the outset, Stephanie looked at this project and realising that there were so many ends, was able to look into the future and see that (as she so eloquently put it) “this was going to be a total %^%$#-show.”  At regular intervals throughout the knitting of this accessory, she then stopped several times and worked on a bunch of the ends so that it wouldn’t all face her at the conclusion.  “I could just tell” she exclaimed, shaking her head incredulously “that if I left them, if all of those ends from all of those mini’s were staring me in the face when I was done, that I’d put it off until later.” (Here, this writer did not ask if the “later” that she was speaking of was actually that thing Stephanie does where she shoves mostly finished knitted stuff into closets for seven years rather than do a little bit of finishing work.)

“I just told myself that I wasn’t going to be that kind of knitter this time…” she said, while blithely ignoring that she has yet to weave in the remaining fourteen ends. “I can’t believe this happened. I made a commitment, and I followed through.  Do you see this? I actually wove in ends as I went along. This doesn’t really happen. I’m like a unicorn.”

When last seen, she was entirely smug, an emotion she scarcely deserves, since she’s really only just done what she was supposed to all along, and fourteen ends remain.

-###-

Fine it was tofu

Yesterday I left the snow and general crap scene of weather in Toronto, and made my way here to Texas, where I’m at the DFW Fiber Fest, an event that I really adore.  It’s got a great vibe, and they’re such nice people, and I thought that even before last year when they were so sweet when I bailed on them to go home for Elliot’s birth. I like them so much, and am actually so grateful for that gift that I am here again, even though it means missing his birthday. They let me be there for the most important one, I can miss this for them, and I got to see him for Easter before I came, and it’s only a day, and you get it.

Truthfully, I was feeling sort of bummed about Easter. It’s usually such a nice holiday for us, low pressure, and all the Spring birthdays get rolled into it, and we have a great dinner at my mum’s and this year I felt like it wouldn’t come together, no matter what I did.  In the end (and I know you’re probably tired of hearing this, but it’s still a problem over here) I realized that I was trying to make it just like the Easters at my Mum’s, which obviously can’t happen because she’s not here and we can’t go there, and I gave up. You’d have thought that I would have figured this out at Christmas, but I didn’t. I accepted that it wasn’t going to be the same, that I couldn’t force it (though I tried for a bit) and I made some new traditions, as many as I could think of – though tried to keep them rooted in the way we do things.  My mother wasn’t there to make a ham, and we don’t eat ham anyway, so I made a vegan ham.

(Fine. It’s tofu. Whatever. My brother eats ham and he said there was “nothing wrong with it” which isn’t a completely ringing endorsement, but is a pretty ecstatic reaction for a carnivore to have to a vegan ham, if you ask me.)

Every year my mum asks me to make this braided bread, but this year I somehow couldn’t so I did bunny buns that I thought Elliot would think were funny. (He did not, but Samantha loved them) and every year I decorate one egg really beautifully as a gift for my mum (she had a whole bowl of them) and so this year I did a bunch.

I figured the girls are all adults, old enough to appreciate them.  I did make the same cake my mother always made, and though not everyone with a spring birthday could be there to celebrate (another stumbling block stumbled upon) Sam and Alex blew out their candles, and Elliot had a practice run. (So far, not his jam.)

We saw Joe’s  family, and we had an egg hunt with the littles, and I knit Elliot some lamb shoes so that he matched the other wee ones.

Pattern: Lamb Shoes, Yarn: Random handspun I found in the closet.

They are charming, and fun and fast to knit, and they come in adult sizes which is something I am really, really resisting out of some sense of decorum that only I feel.  (Everyone else in the family wants me to let go of that sense, and make them all lamb shoes. I think I might have established some unreasonable expectations over Christmas.)

Overall, it was okay – good even, if you try really, really hard not to compare it to other Easters, and just let it be it’s own thing, which is what I am doing, mostly.  Everyone assures me that this odd sense that nothing is right and I’m screwing it all up will pass with time, and I hope so.  There can only be one first of everything without my mum, and we are getting through it.

I mean really, what can be wrong as long as you can look at those little feet?