August 31, 2010
Too Random For a Monday
Turns out that my Monday was so random that now Random Monday is actually Random Tuesday which is really random, and that has to strike someone else as funny besides me. Here's Monday's round-up, presented on a Tuesday.
1. I'm teaching and speaking at Vogue Knitting Live. Pretty excited about it, mostly because of the company I'll be keeping (I've got a serious knitter-crush on most of the other teachers) and because it's New York, and how can you not like New York, and well. It just looks nifty beyond all niftyness, and I collect yarn, which means that I know nifty when I see it. Hope you'll join me or someone else for a class if you're within striking distance, registration is open. It's in January.
2. I'm also teaching/speaking at Knit East, which is a fabulous Canadian event in New Brunswick next year, September 30 to October 2nd, 2011. Some of my favourite people again.
3. I have been knitting. I have a beautiful pair of Rogue Roses to show you, but sadly, no sock model. 
Better pictures of them tomorrow when I can corral one. (Experienced sock models are hard to find, especially since the size you need can vary. Should be a number we can call to get a volunteer. )
4. I got the new Commemorative Edition of the Knitters Almanac in the mail, and I'm so thrilled. The Knitters Almanac has always been a treasure to me, and I feel in Elizabeth a great kindred spirit. (I know that's odd since the knitting is really all we have in common, but knitting's like that. It erases meaningless barriers like age.) I love the new edition, and it's not just because I wrote the introduction, but won't say that I don't love that too. I'm very proud to be associated with one of my heroines this way. I've got a spare copy of this lovely book, so if you'd like a chance that I'll mail it to you, please leave a comment telling me why you would like to have it. I'll pick at random.
5. I started a beatiful new set of mittens. Last year when I was mitten cruising, I spotted these beauties La Joie du Printemps (That's a Ravelry link... Blog link for non-ravelry users is here.) and I fell head over heels for them. I've long been a fan of the fussy-fancy mitten, being a strong proponent of the idea of "dress mittens." (If you live in Canada, it doesn't take you long to get there.) 
Last night I cast them on, using Gauja wool (a beautiful two ply Romney fingering weight that I'm really in love with) and charged along making grand progress. This morning I got up, drank a cup of coffee and admitted to myself that the mitten was way too big. I checked gauge, and yup. 8 stitches to the inch where I should be getting 10, and I ripped the whole thing. I like this pattern too much to be not getting the right size.
6. I've restarted them. I'd insert a rant here about gauge and how silly it is and how it lies like a lying liar bad guy, but really, if you don't check gauge and then don't get gauge, that's nothing but knitter error, and I have nobody to blame but myself.
7. I hate the part of me that doesn't swatch, but really, isn't a mitten small enough to sort of be a swatch?
8. That's what I thought.
August 27, 2010
A Pox
I'm having one of those days, the days that I possess the reverse Midas touch. Instead of turning to gold, everything I touch turns to crap. I've fouled a spreadsheet, my mail program, spilled coffee, forgotten to move the laundry from the washer to the drier (so now everything in there smells a little like cheese and needs to be re-washed), exploded a bag of cat food (don't ask) misplaced an important paper, created a paper disaster while searching for aforementioned paper, received a book I ordered, only to realize it's not the book I meant to order, found a splash of ink in one of my best knitting bags where a cheap pen has clearly vomited on my yarn and then discovered some evidence of a mouse incursion near my flour bin.
I got two packages in the mail but they were both for Joe, my blog software crashed and took a great post with it, we're suddenly and remarkably out of any sort of useful groceries, the battery in my camera is dead and I think I left the charger in Portland, the vacuum cleaner is making an expensive noise, and I think my phlox is dead in the backyard, which is probably related to the clear evidence that one of the soaker hoses out there really hasn't been soaking anything for some time. There was a spider the size of a Honda in the bathroom, the living room is a mess, I did the math wrong on a knitting pattern and it turns out I don't have enough yarn after all, a ball of yarn fell off the winder mid wind and tangled, and I think that I kitchenered the toe of a sock shut this morning with all the skill of a drunken wombat with a crack habit and no knowledge of knitting - which really pisses me off, because you should be able to count on a skill like that, even when you're having a bit of an off day.
On the upside, I found an rotting and moldy apple core down the side of the couch, which at least explains the reek in the living room that floats over you as pungently as an elderly skunk conference every time you sit down. (It does not, however, explain why nobody else could smell that we were running an indoor compost program.)
In short, out an instinct that can only be interpreted as self defense, I am canceling the rest of Friday. If you need me, I'll be in the bath with a beer.
Peace out.
August 25, 2010
A little bit of something
Back home again, weathering that odd shift from one time zone, place and job to another. It always throws me for a loop- a rapid change in expectations and pace. The first day home from a trip is almost always a complete loss. I get up at the wrong time, I'm hungry at the wrong times, and I feel oddly out of place in my own home. Joe and the girls have always come up with their own systems while I'm gone, and while I'm mostly over it (if by "over it" you understand that I mean that I spend the day turning the upside-down coffee cups in the cupboard the right way around again) it still shocks me when I get home, open the fridge and discover that we're keeping the cranberry juice on another shelf now.
(Why, yes. I am resistant to change? What tipped you off?)
I find it so hard, this one day, the day I come back and start unpacking, I always feel a little like I'm in no-mans land. Some weird limbo where nothing is sorted away or home, and I do the laundry, and turn cups around, and put the cranberry juice back where we keep it, sort out the mail and find out what I missed while I was gone, and struggle with the guilt. Today it was triggered by someone who asked me, straight out, if it bothers Joe that I go away like I do, leaving him with all the work.
Begin Rant.
It's the curse of a mother I think, that if I don't earn a living I would feel guilty- but if I leave the house to do it I feel guilty. Sensing a theme? I used to think that this guilt was self imposed, that it came from within me, and that if I could stop spreading it on my own toast that it would stop being true. I did a lot of work on myself to put my guilt in the right place. I reminded myself that although I do travel a lot, I'm home a lot. When I'm not travelling I work from home, make breakfast and dinner, am here when people come home from school... participate at least as much, if not more than I would be able to if I had a 9-5 job and was out of the house every day.
Over the last year, I've realized something. It's not me. Well, more accurately, since I have some issues remaining, it's not ALL me. Society at large does still have different standards for mothers and fathers. Joe travels for work, and nobody's ever suggested to him that he not do it, or that as a father, it's inappropriate that he does. Nobody ever asks him if he feels guilty or bad about being away, and there's something to that question isn't there? If you're asked if it bothers you to be away, isn't the insinuation that it should? How about if someone says "I could never be away from my kids" doesn't that imply somehow that the fact that you do it means that you're a little dead inside?
I think a lot about the things I hear and see around me. The way that people think Joe's an absolute rock star for managing the family while I'm away, but have never complimented me on my ability to manage that same family without him... The way that people tell me that their husband/friend/father is fantastic because he "helps with the kids so much" or is great about helping them with the housework. (Implication being, of course, that childcare and housework belongs to the female partner, and that the male's just a peach for assisting.) I hear my friends and neighbours talk about how great it is that their male partner is "going to try to do more"... and just a few weeks ago I heard a father I know say that he couldn't go out for a beer because he had to "babysit."
(You can imagine my shock when it turned out that he hadn't taken a wee job to pick up some extra cash providing caregiving... but was in fact referring to HIS OWN CHILDREN. His wife was going out and he was staying in. Apparently that's babysitting, not parenting. Feel free to imagine my reaction.)
In any case, I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except to say that it annoys me a bit. My absences seem to be constantly viewed with skepticism, and weighed in the cosmic balance sheet of whether or not I'm a good mum, with no apparent points granted for having been a stay-at-home parent for years and years and years, or no credit given for the choices I made about how much money this family would have when the girls were little so that they would have a full time parent instead. My girls are big, I've waited a long time to have a career, and I have an excellent spouse who has loads of absences himself, including wicked long hours worked when I am home to spell him. We both work hard. We're both good parents, our children are pretty grown up, and our system is pretty equal, all things considered - so why is the public view so often that he's rocking it out, and I'm self serving - or more properly, why is it so much easier to be a dad than a mum, or a man in the workforce than a woman? Why do people still go into a home and decide, if there just so happens to be roaming dust bison or a mystery smell emanating from the fridge, that the adult family member who doesn't have a penis might want to get it together? Why- in my whole life have I never seen anyone walk into a messy home and decide in their hearts that maybe the husband needs to keep the sink a little shinier, rather than passing judgment on the wife?
These are old arguments, and old complaints, and really I'm not sure why I'm still bothered by it. You'd think that at this point in my life I'd be used to people frowning when dads do their fair share while mums do theirs, but apparently I'm not quite over it. You'd think I'd have accepted by now that the way we view mums and dads is essentially skewed.
I guess my point is that it's a bad day to tell me that your husband is going to babysit your own children, or that he's pretty good about helping with the housework, or that mums who sacrificed at least a decade of career to raise children and are now working their bums off to provide the bulk of their families income while being a parent and doing a whole lot of laundry still aren't doing enough to get the credit a dad gets just for breathing right.
To answer the original question, do I think it bothers Joe that I go away and leave him with all the work? No. I think he's grateful, and that he think things are even, and that he and I and I are modelling for our daughters the way things can go in a family if people accept that dads are worth as much as mums (and the other way around) and that I'm as responsible for this families bottom line as Joe is the sink and kids orthodontist appointments. Do we wish that was possible without anybody travelling for anything? Yup- but we're all here when it matters, and we're a team.
End Rant.
August 23, 2010
One Orange to Unite Them All
It is not, as I have explained to Joe a million times, that I am picky. I am not picky. I am precise. I like things done the right way (and it is totally a co-incidence how often that correlates to my way) and I like to give things a lot of thought before they happen to make sure that things do mostly work out and I minimize uncomfortable surprises.
This makes knitting pretty much the perfect hobby for me, since there's nobody to tell me that I can't have it my way the right way all the time, and pretty much no limit to the number of times that I can rip things back and mess with them to satisfy my own set of peculiar standards, and it makes me just about the worst person in the world to be whacking dye on things.. because it's so hard to plan and I know nothing about it and I don't understand how it works and all of that would be bad enough - but add in that dye is permanent and you get someone (that would be me) who's really reluctant to dye yarn- lest I get a mess that I can't fix. This is bad enough with regular yarn, but with handspun? I would be less likely to take up emu plucking as a hobby than dye handspun.
Now my friend Tina, she's not afraid of dyeing anything- and if you're as dye repressed as I am, I would bet you $5 that the amount of abandon she has around this topic would be as disconcerting for you as it was for me. Tina dyes like nothing bad can happen. She dyes like yarn won't be ruined if you make a mistake, she dyes like there's no limit to the amount of dye and yarn there is in the world... she's just not worried about it at all - and this makes us an unlikely dye team. I stand behind her and say "Are you sure you want to put that much dye on?" or "That seems like a lot" or "Why not one skein instead of two" or "Can't we just dip a corner in?"
When Tina hears this, she just smiles and says something subtle like "Me dyer. You writer. Shut up." 
I do. Mostly.
This weekend, Tina and I spent a good long time trying to dye my handspun. I had a specific orange in mind that I wanted, and Tina was determined to help me find it. We started by looking at other oranges (oranges inferior to the one in my mind) and critiquing them. When Tina had an idea what I wanted, she started testing. 
My job? Be picky precise. We spent hours. We had conversations like this.
Me: Tina, that's not right.
Tina: Not right how?
Me: It's too blue. The orange is too blue.
Tina: Right. The orange is too blue - so more red?
Me: No. It needs to be dirtier.
Tina: Dirtier? Like this?
Me: No. Like that. That over there. That bush has almost the right colour of orange flowers except for they are too rosy.
Tina:Too rosy?
Me: Too rosy. And it should be fiercer.
Tina: Fiercer... like that?
Me: No. Now it's an angry fierce. It should by cozy.
Tina: Cosy like brown or cozy like red?
Me: Cosy like brown. But less pink. Not a pink brown.
Tina: Of course not. That would be ridiculous.
Me: Exactly, and it shouldn't have cool yellow. Warm yellow.
Tina: Just warm, or warm and dirty?
Me: Warm and dirty.
Tina: Awesome. Like this? Does it need to be cozy, warm and dirty or are we done with cozy.
Me: Oh no. Still cozy.
Tina: Naturally. Let's do another skein. 
On and on it went, with Tina making notes and mixing dyes and me describing (poetically) the sort of orange that I wanted and the general mood of the colour.
(Again, I point out that I am not picky, it is just that I care a great deal. I'm misunderstood as an artist.) We went on and on and Tina... well. She seemed to be having a lot of fun, which is interesting, because it's sort of the opposite way that Joe seems to feel about the version of this that you play when you have to choose a colour for the kitchen paint job.
We knew we had it when we pulled out a test skein that had both of us gasping.
Perfect. Absolutely perfect. We duplicated it on another skein.... just to make sure it was repeatable...
and then my handspun had its turn. 
Look! 
Perfect orange. Just perfect.
I still don't know what I'm going to make out of it.. but the pleasures of a deeply personal orange can't be underestimated.
I love this colour, and I think Tina must too, because in the last 12 hours- 
She's put it on everything.
