May 15, 2012
On Wings
Yesterday's day off seems to have sort of been what I needed. I've still got a bit of a stuffy nose and cough, but I've turned a corner for sure, because it's clear that I'm going to live, and I don't mind that, which isn't something I can say about every day of the last week. I really did spend yesterday doing something close to nothing - and made excellent progress on my wingspan, though I thought for sure I would finish it, and that didn't happen. Against my will, I fell asleep on the chesterfield, and as I'm sure many of you have noticed, holding knitting is far less effective than knitting it. 
Did I tell you how I came to be knitting Wingspan? Truth be told I was in a weakened state. I'd had this cold for a week and I was right at the end of the little teaching tour, and I was in River Colors Studio in Ohio, and everyone there was so nice and so charming, and I'd been so good about not really buying anything. (Actually that's sort of a lie. I bought a big fleece from Beth when I was at the Spinning Loft - but I don't think that counts. Fleece isn't technically yarn and besides Beth cheats. She washes you up a lock or two, and puts the fleece near you so the fumes get to you- and this time she even spun me a sample. That's not fair - but it does work, and I have the fleece in the living room to prove it. ) Anyway, I was in the yarn shop and students started coming in, and a bunch of them were wearing Wingspan. Now, I'm not blind and I don't live under a big knitted rock, so I'd seen this pattern around - and it didn't interest me much. Sure it's sort of a cool construction and it looks fun, but there was something about the jazziness of it that didn't scream my name into the night, and life's too short to knit things that can't even mumble in your direction. So that's what I thought, and then all these students came in (clearly this pattern and yarn combination had run through the shop like a virus) wearing Wingspan knitted out of Kauni.
I've got a soft spot for Kauni, as I do all colour-changing, self-striping yarns, and while the rainbow Kauni in wingspan was a little bright for my taste, there were knitters there wearing it knit out of the more subtle, lovely colourways - and once I'd seen three, I started to get a little suggestible. I'd finished the Color Affection and had started a little sweater for Lou, but I wasn't feeling it. (Never mind that I wasn't feeling much, except for some fairly strong feelings about human frailty as it relates to viruses) and somehow, when I got into my car to drive home from Lakewood, there was Kauni in my car.
I started it that night when I got home, and now I'm really, truly almost done, and what a fast, fun, knit this is, and I really think that knit out of a lovely subtle shade of Kauni (EF) that it's sort of classy and cozy looking. (I totally get where the urge to knit it out of the rainbow shade comes from too. It's supremely entertaining to watch the different wedges emerge in different colours, and I can see how that entertainment would only be more exciting with more colours. I'm resisting through.) 
The pattern calls for 8 wedges, but I'm going to keep going as long as the yarn holds out (probably 9 wedges, so not a huge modification.) I totally would have finished today, but with the Bike Rally looming (and still feeling like I've made a big mistake to sign up) I'm swapping out my usual knitting time with coffee in the AM for putting my bum on my bike and going for training rides. This morning was 30km, and it didn't go too badly, which is a big change from Sunday morning when ... well. I don't want to go into it, but let's say the world has one less chipmunk in it, and I have one more bruise. (Unrelated events, sadly. It was a bad day.) There's an excellent chance I'm not quite built for this. (Maybe I am. Who knows - it's a family team this riding the 600km this year - I'm riding, Ken's riding, my sister is riding, Amanda is riding, and so is Sam. Megan's taking a year off because of work, but Pato's doing it. That's most of us, and if my sister can do it, so can I - or die trying.)
This afternoon I've got a ton to do, from writing to cleaning to shopping to... well all of the stuff I should have done yesterday and didn't, all lumped together with what I have to do today, and will. Top of the list, tweaking my speech "This is your brain on knitting" (if you were in Sarnia or London to see me lately, you've probably heard it) so I can tell it to a hometown crowd tomorrow night when I'm the guest speaker at the Downtown Knit Collective.
Looking forward to it - way more than the next training ride, and a tiny bit less than finishing Wingspan.
May 14, 2012
Jammie Day
I got up this morning and staggered downstairs, making only a minor attempt to cough up my right lung as I did so - which is a considerable improvement in my health, so I put in a load of laundry and made coffee and surveyed the disaster that we're calling a home. Joe and Sam were on their own for a week, and it shows. Sure, they do dishes, and cook and clean - Joe had fresh sheets on the bed for me when I arrived home, and I noted the freshly cleaned bathroom with as much glee as I could muster, but when I'm not here, the house just sort of comes unglued. That's the only way I know how to put it. It's like whatever fragile system that holds this house together needs me to work, and when I'm gone these tenuous bonds disappear and the whole house starts falling apart like something out of a science fiction movie. For example, last Friday when I left, I owned five laundry baskets. Today, I appear to have two and there's no word on where the others might be. Everything in the fridge smells funny and there's ice cream, but no bread, and it turns out it must be me who sorts the mail, because there's a mountain of it on the dining room table along with Joe's 25 year old Royal Canadian Sea Cadet uniform, which I really can't explain, except to think that as the systems that run the house dissolved they ravelled the continuity of time while they went.
We could use some groceries, I really should unpack and sort out all my teaching stuff, and I have a huge backlog of email and work to do - the scope of what I should be accomplishing today is amazing, and yet, I can't do it. I really can't. I don't seem to even be able to get dressed, and while I managed to toss that single load of laundry in, that was apparently the sum total of all the housework I can bring myself to face. It doesn't make sense, because last week when I felt like death I kept on trucking, and here I am today, feeling a ton better and I'm sitting around in my jammies. There's a discordance between what I should be doing and what I am doing, and I can't even seem to work up the energy to care. Normally taking a day off like this, I mean really, really taking a day off, not doing hardly anything when things really need doing makes me feel sort of guilty, but not today. I'm tired. I have the tail end of this wicked cold/flu/black death, and yesterday I fell off my bike (literally) and you know what?
I feel like I have a lot of knitting to do today, and that I might have a nap, and screw the laundry. Screw it. There's absolutely nothing in this house that's so important that it can't wait a day for a sane, healed, healthy woman who can think in straight lines to do it. The kitchen floor doesn't even care if it's clean, it's inanimate, and if that email waited three days, it can wait four.
I'm taking a day, I'm kicking this colds arse, and I think I can finish the wingspan I started Saturday night, and that feels plenty productive to me.
May 9, 2012
Dashing
I'm finding it really hard to blog this week, but I'm going to try and do better. I'm travelling and teaching, driving my car around Lake Erie. So far it seems a lot like sleep, drive, teach, drive, sleep, drive, teach - you get the idea. I'm also struggling with what I've been trying to convince myself is a bad cold, but is seeming more and more like the plague as it refuses to give up its hold on me. I stagger into the hotel room and collapse into the closest bed each night and think about blogging for about 20 seconds before falling asleep in a nest of tissues, tea and bottles of water. I'm finally feeling a little better but last night as I arrived in Indiana my voice left me at the state line, and this morning, it wasn't back. On my way to Knitting Today (my friendly host here) I panicked and staggered into a drug store, walked up to the pharmacist and whispered "Help me." He suggested sign language, and then a bunch of other stuff, all of which helped enough to let me croak, cough and whisper through a six hour class enough to communicate pretty well I think. (I hope, anyway.)
Unbelievably, I'm enjoying teaching and meeting knitters anyway, which must mean that the knitters and shops I've been in are darned nice indeed- to be able to make up for the plague. The first night on the road (in Sarnia, where I had a lovely time at Feather Your Nest, just lovely) I finished my Color Affection/Infection/Addiction/Affliction and I washed it in the hotel sink, then blocked it on the bed and left a note for housekeeping explaining that it was a hand knit, and how I was drying it, and how it was okay not to worry about making my bed or anything.
When I came back, the lady had written "Ok - this is nice" on the note.
It is nice too.
(I took these pictures three metres from my hotel. Indiana looks just the way you imagine it does. )
Yarn was BMFA lightweight in Winter Solstice, Sky Blue, and A Hazy Shade of Blue. I've already worn it a couple of times, and tossed it into my hotel room nest of a bed each night for a snuggle. It's super cozy. 
I thought knitting one would get it out of my system...but on Friday night Sarah- The Plucky Knitter herself, gave me some yarn, and then I might have bought one to go with and now the only thing standing between me and another one is a swift, ball winder and the little sweater I'm trying to bash out for Lou.
It's coming along really, really slowly, since the only knitting time I'm really getting is at red lights in the car (which is where it's posed in that picture) and I've had to split that time between knitting and blowing my nose. (It's a super elegant scene in my car these days, let me tell you.) Still, I am feeling (if not sounding) better today, and maybe I'll cut loose and stay up past 8:30 tonight and make some real progress.
May 4, 2012
Dear Kelly
I know it's hard for you, to be Auntie Kelly and to be so far away from little Lou, so that's part of the reason I wasn't really totally pissed when you dropped off a basket of baby sweater chunks (with no pattern, I'm just saying) and high-tailed it home to Madagascar, leaving behind only the admonishment to make sure Lou didn't outgrow the sweater before I sewed it up and dropped it off. 
Also, the Auntie's have to stick together, so I told you I would sew it up, but then I sort of didn't.
I saw Lou on Saturday, and then I was going to see him again last night for a little celebration, and I realized I'm leaving today to go away for a week and that meant another week would go by without me doing this sweater, and so I busted a move. I worked on it before dinner, on the way to dinner (we picked up your mum) and at dinner, and somewhere around the cheesecake and champagne, a sweater was born. 
I think it looks pretty good.
I put it on Lou, and we started going over the basics of sweater modelling. We tried a serious face... 
and then I told him that babies should really smile in pictures, because you want to leverage the cute while you've got it. 
Lou got it right away.
Anyway Kelly, I bet you miss him, and I just want to tell you that last night on a cold, rainy night in Toronto, your nephew and mine was snuggled in the sweater that two aunties built (mostly you) - and I think he was pretty cozy.
That sweater is going to fit him for a long time. I rolled the sleeves up.
We miss you.
Love,
Steph
(PS. Joe is getting a little better with him, but not really.) 
(PPS. Next time dropping off the pattern with the sweater chunks would be great.)
(PPPS. Katie says this is now the only sweater Lou has that fits him. That sounds like a mission to me.)
