Yarn Harlot

Problem Solving

Yesterday, I cast off those pretty socks, smirked for a bit and then realized that for the first time in a long time... I didn't have another pair of socks on the go - or not here anyway. (If I was home I would have had another few choices, as I have the basket of abandoned sock projects that I can rifle.) Luckily for me I'm travelling with Tina - who usually has a fair bit of sock yarn on her, but before I decided to break into her car and look for a little skein of something pretty, we noticed that the fridges level of beer was getting perilously low, and we decided to go to town. Town here is Port Hadlock, or at least that's the closest town with a grocery store, so we struck out in the wind and rain in search of replacement beer. We found the store with no trouble, and on our way back to the car we saw it. A yarn store. Dinah's Yarn Shop, to be precise, and like moths to a flame, we were in.

One cozy hour later, after seeing many charming things, and getting a special demo of the very cool Hansen Crafts MiniSpinner (They're local) we staggered out of there, with rather more wool than we came in with, and a plan. Both Tina and I cast on for a swirl scarf with Jojoland Melody yarn, and spent the evening exploring all of the ways that it is possible to screw up the pattern. At one point I actually went to Ravelry to make sure that someone else had ever finished one, since it seemed impossible for either of us to make it correctly through one swirl. (This trip to Rav was devastating. Not only have lots of people finished this, most of them did the shawl rather than the scarf. Obviously it's me. I'm trying not to take it too hard.)

This is, after several hours of knitting, all I've got (please pardon the photo. I had to take it in poor light because it's still raining) - and I'm light years ahead of Tina, who had to start over an extra time because she accidentally took my yarn out of the bag and started with that, and I made her give it back, even though she was underway. (What can I say. It was my yarn.) I'm getting the better of if tonight. I can feel it.
In other news:

Another Port Ludlow employee knitting. (This is Dana, and I've just showed her how to purl.) It's really all over but the crying for them.

Weekend Report

The little retreat is over here at Port Ludlow, and it was simply wonderful. The only thing I could have wished for was better weather, since it has been rainy and windy, enough so that the wind kept some knitters up at night, so fierce was the noise. It's also fierce enough that Tina and I have waged a constant war with the wind to keep it from throwing our deck chairs into the sea, and they're heavy metal chairs, not the plastic ones that are just toys to the wind. It's windy enough that it stopped some ferries and closed or badly slowed bridges (adding an element of excitement to travel plans for many knitters.) and stormy enough that almost the entire community had no power day before yesterday. (That passed pretty quickly.) On the upside, the grey windy rain also created a cozy atmosphere, hard to beat for a lot of fibre people, as we all gathered together in the warm hotel, knitting, spinning and dyeing.

This whole hotel was booked out by knitters, and I think we were a source of non-stop entertainment to the staff, who have responded in a way I'd never dreamed of. Since the last time we filled the place full, most of the staff has taken up knitting. (In fact, of the four desk clerks, one showed us her scarf in progress when we arrived, another bought a spinning wheel from Morgaine on Saturday, the third already knew how to knit, and Tina and I have a date with the fourth tonight - already a crocheter, to complete the set. If you're checking into Port Ludlow, there's a knitter there to greet you.)

(Morgaine holds court.)
Tina taught a little dyeing and a lot of colour, I taught a lot of history, tools, books and lever knitting, and further to our belief that all knitters should have at least a working knowledge of spinning to help them really understand yarn - we (with a lot of help from Morgaine) taught spinning all over the place.

(That's my class - right before they inexplicably all went to the bar and brought back drinks. Wonder what that means?)

(Steve shows off his socks at show and tell)
I'm always surprised at these things how much knitting there is around without there being much knitting being done by me. There's very little knitting while teaching - or rather, there's a lot but it's all swatches and such... and in the evenings we're talking and organizing, and then there's nothing left of a day except to fall over and sleep. Still, even puttering away a little at a time I finished these pretty socks.

STR mediumweight in Blue Lagoon (a colour that's not up yet but will be soon, or so Tina tells me. I'm not the boss of her yarn, just the thief who steals yarn from her desk before its time.)

Pattern is Holidazed, by Anne Hanson, a pattern I really love. It's easy to memorize, unisex, and since it's knit with mediumweight (seems to me like a light dk weight) on 2.5mm needles the socks in size small are only 48 stitches around. They fly.

It was a grand time, I have new socks, and I can't wait to do it again. The students were a blast, the staff was a blast, and even the fact that another impending storm (a big one) is going to pin me down and delay my travel home until Saturday can't take the happy off me. I'm going to cozy up by the fire in a new pair of socks, watch the big storm come over the sea (maybe lash the chairs down with some yarn) and hunker down with a good porter (rather fond of the local Deschutes) until it lets up.

I think I'll knit.

Happenings

1. I am at Port Ludlow, and the knitters arrive today. I'm pretty excited about that.

2. I admit that at least part of the fun comes from the staff at the resort trying to act like a whole hotel full of knitters is absolutely normal and they aren't flipped by it at all. It's charming.

3. There is not a single room in this hotel rented to anyone but a knitter.

4. It's like the world of my dreams.

5. I can't wait until the store is open to the public on Saturday afternoon and even more knitters come.

6. It is not often that we outnumber them this way.

7. I can't wait to see how they feel about the spinners.

8. I was so excited on the plane that I prematurely ended a sock. Now it's too short and I have to rip it back.

(Yarn, STR mediumweight, colour is a trial run of "blue Lagoon", which isn't for sale yet but will be Nov. 28th.) pattern "Holidazed" by Anne Hanson.)

9. I hear that's a common problem that happens to all knitters sooner or later and I shouldn't feel badly about it.

Telegram from an Airport

Finished Nutkins last night so I could wear them on the plane going to Port Ludlow. Stop.

They are as sparkly as I hoped. Starry yarn very much so. Stop.
2% silver does not bother metal detectors at Airport. They didn't make me stop. Stop.

Mirrored cables, and changed toes. Otherwise, knit as instructed. Have more sparkly yarn in suitcase, as I'm worried that I can't stop. Stop.

Was knitting socks on plane when seatmate remarked that I seem to knit all the time. He said "you look like you never stop".

I said nothing.
Stop.

All Sparkles All The Time

I don't really know what came over me when it came to this sparkle yarn, but I'm a smidge obsessed. (I know. It's so unlike me.) It came into our local shop a few weeks ago, just one skein in each colour, and the competition was immediately stiff. (If by "stiff" you understand that a group of people who love and care for each other a great deal were inexplicably reduced to hoarding and hiding skeins within minutes.) That day I only scored one skein (I could have done better, but refused to lower myself to do what it would have taken) and I've been very busy knitting it up into a pair of sparkly Chinatown Apple Nutkins,

although it doesn't really look a lot like Nutkins because I mirrored each alternate cable, but in my heart it's a Nutkin none the less.

The sparkles, as much as you wouldn't expect them to move the heart of this hippy-crunchy-natural fibre, vegetarian pacifist's hear... do indeed move me, and I can't get enough,

which might explain why when Megan got in more of the sparkly yarn, I immediately scooped up a skein of the white with silver. (I would have scooped two, but you should ask Rachel H how low she's willing to go to protect her own sparkle yarn interests.) Another skein was found at another shop, and now I have two, which is totally enough for a scarf. (I do have dibs on Denny's leftovers for mittens too, should this obsession not run itself out in two skeins worth.)

As soon as I saw the glittery white, all I could think of was snow. The way that fresh extra cold snow glitters like adamantine crystals, and a little idea that has consumed my weekend was born. There have been swatches knit, charts made and wild imaginings of swathes of glittering snowflakes wrapped 'round necks.

I'm trying, with varying degrees of success to convince myself to end one sparkly affair before taking up with another and finish the Nutkin socks, but I ask you. Who could resist the promise of a sparkly snowflake scarf?

PS: Megan did kit up the Pretty Thing pattern and half skeins of Mooi and she has them at Lettuce Knit in several colours. Rumour has it that they're $30 CDN. She ships.

PPS: For anyone in the neighbourhood, the tiny little market (Blue Moon Fiber Arts and Carolina Homespun) that's present at our retreat in Port Ludlow will be open to the public from 1:30 till 6:30 this coming Saturday. Maybe we'll see ya.

Underprepared, again

I believe that I may have made my position on the brassiere public before in a subtle manner. I'm pretty sure too that copping publicly to the fact that I only own one of the regular sort of them means that they're pretty low on my list of priorities. I've got about 16 rants that I could give you on bras.

Rant 1: Why aren't womens bodies good enough without modification or alteration? [Note: Rant 1 leads directly to Rant 1a: How come women have to shave stuff and wear lipstick to be acceptable, but men are fine the way they are? and as such it is best to avoid triggering Rant 1 unless you have time for a two-fer.]
Rant 2: Doesn't pretending that breasts look or are located differently than they actually are just set us all up to think our breasts are crappy?
Rant 3: For something that everyone seems to agree all women should wear, they are pretty expensive. Seems like a trick.
Rant 4: I was an IBCLC for 10 years. Breasts come in more variety than bras do. Also seems like a trick.
Rant 5: How come bras are all designed to give you the breasts of a pre-pregnancy 21 year old? My breasts are working class, thank you very much, and have seen tons of action. Stack that up against your inexperienced breasts.
Rant 6: I think that insisting that I pretend my breasts are 21 forever implies that there's something wrong with women aging. Is that what you're trying to say? Is it? Eh??

I'll stop there. I'm sure you have your own, and that a bunch of you will finish the list in the comments. The point is, that I don't like them and I don't wear them much. I don't have an issue with other women wearing them, and I even have moments when I wear them myself. I wear them when I'm doing something fancy, when all my body parts are trying to look their best. I wear one when I'm running, because I can agree that their mobility is not an advantage in that activity, and I've been known to wear one when I put on a tailored shirt and discover that the fashion industry has an inflexible notion about where my breasts should be located, and that without a bra, I am may be challenged to have my "empire" above an empire waist.   It's just that the rest of the time - nobody has ever been able to give me a reason beyond "Don't you want to be pretty?" (and yes, I do... but I'd rather do it in a way that isn't an illusion that would shatter bystanders if they saw me naked) why I personally should wear a bra.

All of this said, today I have a meeting with the school, and I have discovered over the years that for some insane reason (Rant 7b) people seem to think that you are smarter and more reasonable if you have controlled breasts. I have tried to explain that I don't think with my breasts, and that whether or not they are controlled has nothing to do with whether or not I have sound judgment or good ideas, but really, all that does is make me the crazy braless mother instead of just the braless one. For today, I should like very much to be taken seriously, and so I decided to put on a bra so that everyone can see that I am a proper mother. (Rant 8b A whole lot of mothering- especially the early part, is easier to do if you're not wearing a bra.   Why do we make even more complex bras to deal with that?) Thing is? I can't find it. I have ripped up this whole house and I can't find it. I am now confronted with a choice between being going without and trying to hide that with a complex scarf/sweater plan I'm working out (which will likely make me "that sweaty mum" instead of "that braless mum" and actually has the potential to make me "that sweaty braless mum" which really could be worse...) or I can give up, go there like I am, and sit there braless and knitting while my daughter rolls her eyes, and just acknowledge that I've gotten this far in parenting without a bra, and say "I'm up here" if anyone stares.

I hate this. I do have most of a nice sock though. Do you think it will help?

Shoemaker Syndrome

About 2 weeks ago, I hauled out the contents of my handknit sock drawer, which had been lying fallow for the summer, gave everything a bubble bath and lay it out to dry. That's when I noticed. The contents of my sock drawer are, considering that I am a sock knitter of a reasonably prolific nature, sort of meagre and shoddy. They all have holes, or darned spots or holes and darned spots, and dudes... it's not how a knitters sock drawer should look. You'd think that I'd have a pretty formidable selection from which to choose, but there's nearly squat in there. I think what happened is that a couple of years ago I noticed the same thing and went on a big self-sock knitting jag, filled the drawer with socks my size, and then continued on my merry way, meeting the demands of familial and friendly sock drawers - and didn't think about what would happen next.

What happened next is that since all of the socks are about the same age, they all had a similar lifespan, and they all got worn about the same amount and therefore, all got their first holes about the same time, were darned about the same time, got their second holes in another communal wave of woolly disintegration, and have now all died entirely in what feels like a plague set upon my sock drawer. I've decided to fix that right up by whipping myself up a few pairs, and then to henceforth remedy this by adding to it now and then, just so they can't all expire at once. I thought that this pair would be the first to replenish the drawer...

STR Lightweight, colourway "Petroglyphs" - no pattern, just a little seed stitch and ribbing slammed into my my standard sock recipe . 2.25mm needles.

They fit, they're charming and cozy, and they're colours I love and sort of wear. (Except the red - well, and the yellow. Ok. I really only wear that brown and that grey, but everyone needs the zip in thir wardrobe to come from somewhere) and they worked up fast. Only problem is, the other night when I was over at my mum's, she admired them. And they fit her. And she asked if they were for her. And - well. I love my mum and like it when she loves socks and... you can guess what decision I made next.

Christmas is coming after all, and there does need to be socks for the people who love to get them - and I love giving socks to people who value them and love to get them. I really love it. Making socks for other people is a real pleasure. It's the only reason, really, that a sock knitter who churns out this many socks wouldn't have any. I'm not a martyr though, and I'm trying to remember that I'm a person who really values hand knit socks and loves to get them too, so I've wasted invested some time this afternoon hunting up a pattern for a really beautiful skein of yarn I wrestled Rachel H for in a sick knitters cage match at Lettuce Knit purchased, and with my wool as my witness, they will be mine.

Dream in Color Starry - Chinatown Apple colourway. Pattern as yet undecided. Maybe Nutkin.

Ever have trouble keeping your knitting for yourself? Own many socks?

Random Tuesday

1. I think the time change thing sucks and I don't care who knows it. Making dinner in the pitch dark makes me feel like I'm running behind and I squandered a day. No amount of looking at the clock seems to convince me otherwise.

2. One thing about going to SOAR and then coming back (no matter when) is that there was buckets of knitting time embedded in the travel. I churned out a pair of big mens socks:

Austerman Step yarn, lost ball band, don't know the colourway. My standard sock pattern, 2.25mm needles.

3. Damn. The 2 on my keyboard is funky.

4. They don't fit Joe. That really bummed him out, but pleased me to no end because I wasn't making them for him. He tried them on anyway.

5. That yarn is 75%wool, 25% nylon and is treated with Aloe Vera and Jojoba Oil that the manufacturer says stays in for 40 washes.

6. I can't tell it's in there at all, so I don't know what to say about that.

7. I forgot how much I really like knitting up the machine printed yarns like this that do repeatable stripes or patterns. It indulges my complete love of hand knit socks that are identical, rather than fraternal twins.

9. Not that I don't love fraternal twin socks.

Yarn, STR lightweight, colourway called "I don't know because I stole it off Tina's desk because I didn't bring enough yarn to SOAR and I was worried I would run out of knitting on the way there" (Maybe petroglyphs? Not my job to know. Just the yarn thief.)

10. I think she likes it when I steal her yarn, or she wouldn't leave it right there. She knows how I am.

11. Is that blaming the victim?

12. The knitting that I finished so that I was forced into a life of crime was another Pretty Thing, this time in the stunningly beautiful laceweight Louet Mooi. It's a bamboo/bison/cashmere blend, soft as anything...

and the only thing it doesn't have going for it is the price - which is to say that it is priced exactly like high quality exotic yarn should be... which is so say that it's expensive. Fair.. but fair still doesn't put it in the budget a lot of the time.

13. My favourite thing about the Mooi is that the the bamboo makes it shiny, the cashmere makes it soft and the bison gives it a pretty halo, but the halo isn't light, like the fuzz is with mohair, it's dark. It's like a reverse halo. (Wait, would a reverse halo go in instead of out? Maybe I don't mean reverse. I mean... well. I mean dark. The halo is dark. Holy cow. Pass the coffee.)

I don't know if you can see it in that picture, but it's really neat.

14. I still have to weigh the leftovers and the cowl to make sure, but I am pretty darned convinced that it took quite a bit less than half a skein.

15. I think Megan at Lettuce Knit is going to kit this up, Pretty Thing pattern and half skein of Mooi, which would be really cool, because it would mean that you wouldn't have to buy a full skein of an expensive yarn to make it, which would mean that you could stop tossing around that plan you have to sell a toddler for yarn money. That's just wrong. An understandably natural response to this yarn, but wrong anyway.

16. I can't be sure she's going to do that.

17. I can't find my scale, which would help a lot.

18. I actually can't find anything around this house right now. It's pretty trashed.

19. I have developed a theory that I interrupted a system that Joe and the girls are running. That I leave the house for a trip and they immediately begin to live like pig royalty. They don't clean anything, they eat all sorts of things that are bad for them (there is substantial evidence to support the conclusion that they have largely pancake based diet while I'm away.) They do insane and wild things like put the spoons in the fork slot of the cutlery tray and they are reckless to the point of using THREE towels per bath. (That's just obscene.) There is illicit ice cream eating - people leave their garbage around, nobody recharges the phone.. they pull out all the stops. Then, when there is 24 hours left before I return, they wig out, pull together and restore the house to its regular level of filth and disorder before I come home.

20. I think that by coming home early, they did not have time to disguise their ways, and I caught them in the midst of their defiling.

21. They deny it.

Good Mothers

Since the requests for posts from SOAR are coming in, along with requests for any posts at all, since I was quiet for an uncharacteristically long time, I'm just going to bite the bullet and tell you all.

I'm not at SOAR. I'm home. I came home on Wednesday, and I don't really know what to say about being here and not there, except that I felt that my family needed me, and I wasn't sure what to do, and in the end, I decided that there were worse things than being home when someone didn't need you, but little worse than being away when I should have been home, and I thought I could live with the former, but not the latter, and three planes and 18 hours later I was home.

This I thought, was a very mature and grown up thing to do. I saved all year for SOAR, it's the first time I signed up for the whole week, I got all the classes I wanted and I even gave up going to other stuff like Rhinebeck so that I could afford it. My friends are all there, including some I only see at SOAR, and we've been talking about it for months and months - and I wouldn't be honest if I didn't tell you that I was really, really bummed about leaving.

I know that as good mothers we aren't ever supposed to resent sacrifices for our children. I know this because in the few days since I came home and have expressed disappointment in missing SOAR, I've been getting the standard message quietly from part of the world around me, and loudly from the Mother Police that live in my head.   (If you are a mother I'm sure you have your own Mother Police. They never take a day off and have unreasonably high standards.)

The Mother Police say good mothers don't mind when somebody throws up and they miss dinner with a friend who only comes to town once a year, so that they can do 6 loads of pukey laundry instead. Good mothers don't mind when a babysitter cancels and everyone goes to the party without them.   Good mothers are selfless. Good mothers put themselves last, good mothers never mind when they miss a good time as long as they are there for their kids. I got the good mother memo. I know how I am supposed to feel. I'm supposed to need to walk away from a trip I've been looking forward to for a year, and I'm supposed to say that it's perfectly alright and I don't mind even a little bit, and that my family is so important to me that the things that I want for myself don't matter at all. They need me and I'm here. Good mothers don't talk about what they want or what they feel.

Well, maybe it makes me a bad mother, but I'm calling bulls**t on the Mother Police. Screw it. I wish I was at SOAR with my friends. There. I've said it. I think the fact that I'm not supposed to care about the things that make me happy is stupid. I think that treating women like nothing matters as long as their families are happy is stupid, and that teaching them to put themselves last and not bitch about it is a big chunk of what's wrong in the world.   I'm part of my family, and so are you, and the things that I need or want matter too.

I am here. I did come, I did walk away because I was needed, I am doing what I need to do, and I would do it again, because I do put my family before myself.

The good mother memo says that all of that means that I shouldn't feel bad about SOAR- and that a good mother wouldn't talk about feeling badly about missing it.   I respectfully suggest that's pretty stupid. I think the fact that I really wish I was there, that I really wanted to stay, that I've been honest about my disappointment and sadness about leaving and that I came home and did what I had to do anyway? I feel like the Mother Police should give me extra points, because instead of that sadness making my family feel like I love them less...
I bet that them knowing that I put them ahead of all those things I really, really wanted for myself means that they can see just how much they matter to me.

Yes, It's true

Just to finally answer the question "Can you knit on a plane?"

Yup. Once again, on Air Canada, it was no problem.

Denny, Rachel H and I made our way from Toronto to Oregon for SOAR, and we knit the whole way. The only thing that security said was "What you're carrying is perfectly safe, but.. what is it?" Answer, spinning wheels, spindles, needles and yarn. Thanks for asking.
The only thing the flight attendant said was "Is this the Stitch and Bitch row of my plane?" Answer - "Yes. Didn't you get the memo?" She laughed. Turns out she was a knitter. The only people on the flight who thought it was weird were the other passengers, who just couldn't keep their eyes off the knitting section.

We felt very normal. Safety in numbers.

Absolutley Positively

Last night, lying in the bath I swore that when the furnace guys came back today I would be more positive, and I am.

I am positive that this sucks. Today's contribution to the experience is not just unexpected work or financial outlay (we've adjusted to that) but the fact that the old furnace needs to be removed and severed into pieces small enough to exit the house. This is done with some kind of really, really big saw that isn't just loud enough to shake the house, but is so unspeakably loud that I am actually worried that it might shake some of the fillings out of my teeth. It is a noise so loud that even though my intellectual self is not frightened, my emotional self simply can't be convinced that I am not having an emergency. The result of this is that I alternately sit here knitting and being just fine (other than the fears for my dental work) and then periodically have to breathe deeply to avoid the urge to run screaming from the house because the part of my brain that's pretty darn primitive can't be convinced that a noise that big doesn't mean that I should run for my life before the herd of robotic evil T-rex's bursts out of the basement, murderous bloodlust in their LED eyes. (Yes, I do think that robotic T-rex's would be worse. Don't you?)

An additional element of crazy is introduced if you go and look to make sure that there are no robotic T-rex's because the big saw that they are using (by they, I mean Greg and James. Nice guys. We're becoming very close) actually makes huge sparks that light up the basement. (They also set off all of my smoke alarms, which is another nuance of the entire effect. I was afraid that all this noise would damage my hearing, now I'm hoping it will.)

Finally, while this is the one part that I cannot hope to convey to you in any sort of realistic way... there is a smell. The smell of rotten eggs (residue in the old gas pipes, apparently) burning hair and dust (that would be from the burning hair and dust within the old furnace, ignited by the saw) musty damp soil (that's from the digging) acid, chemical smells (primer and glues from the new ducts) and the unmistakable smell of charred camel dung with notes of rubber cement, four day old un-refrigerated salad greens, and the vaguest whiff of sulphur and cattle. (I have no idea where that comes from. I have terrible suspicions, considering the big animal bones that were revealed when the digging started - a little reminder that this used to be farmland.) I wish, more than I can tell you, that this blog had a scratch and sniff so that I could share this with you, in even a minor, unrepeatable way. (Greg and James assure me that it will all be fine. They also assure me it doesn't smell that bad, which makes me think that what I was hoping would happen to my hearing has taken out their sense of smell.)

Still (positive, be positive) things are going forward, and the noise, smell, dirt and fear are all wonderful indicators that these people are going to be finished soon and that makes me unreasonably happy. As of this writing, my antique, much beloved, never missed a day, worked when the power was out furnace has been hacked to bits and sent forth from this place and before it left it gave back a final gift.

Sam's once cherished "blue tiny baby", which accidentally went down a hall vent when she was three years old and prompted two full days of heartbroken sobbing. (Her, not me.) I'd forgotten it was gone until they split the furnace open way down in the basement, and there, in the bottom of the cold air return, was blue tiny baby, along with all the memories of how we were parted, and how hard we tried to get it back.
I can't wait for Sam to get home from school.

Whatever it takes

You know, you would think that after years and years of living in an old house, that I would have learned by now that absolutely nothing ever goes the way that it should, and that everything is more complicated than it needs to be. We can't just replace kitchen cupboards, because the cupboards are attached to plaster and lathe walls that crumble when you take down the cupboards, which fall to the ground to reveal that the main support of your house partly gone, which you discover is because the sill plate has rotted out. (AKA: How the cost of a reno quadruples in a nauseating week from hell in which a hole to the outside is made in your kitchen and must be defended so that raccoons do not gain entry - but I digress.) I should have known. We have never so much as hung a picture in this house without having to deal with some sort of unexpected outcome - part of which I blame on the fact that 125 years ago when my house was built there were no building codes. Just what the guys whacking the place together could manage or thought would be good. (Thanks, mystery guys from the past, for such wonders in my home as leaving the grounding wires off much of my electrical, and thinking closets were for sissies with too many clothes. Awesome.

All of this should have braced me for the knowing that as awful as the furnace things was going- that it likely wasn't the end of the upset, and that was certainly true last night when the other shoe dropped. Turns out that the portion of our basement that is a soil crawlspace wasn't deep enough to allow the furnace guys to crawl in and though they thought they could work with that they can't and they called last night to essentially ask us how the digging we didn't know we neeed to do was going. Naturally, since we didn't know we needed to do it, work had been proceeding rather slowly.

(Do not judge my little house in this picture. I told you, it's very old. Old basments are complex places.)

It isn't now. Joe called in the reserves (like Pato, what a good boy) and started to dig a trench through the top layer of the crawlspace, and hauled dirt onto the basement floor, then bagged it up, then it was carried by me and Ken (ok. Mostly Ken) to the backyard... where... where I'll have to figure out how you make it go away. Work can now proceed on the furnace on schedule tomorrow morning, and for a little while there, the tears had stopped. (Let's not discuss the mud/dirt slurry in the basement. I'll figure that out later.)

At that point, we were pretty sure that things were as bad as they could get, and we were feeling pretty good about our ability to roll with the old house surprises, when Joe showed me some bricks he'd noticed. (You can actually see them on the left of that picture.) There had been cosmetic half wall build in front of the dirt years and years ago, and apparently that hadn't let us see that bricks were mysteriously landing there on the floor.

Joe: Look at this, it's bricks.
Me: That's weird, isn't this a wooden house?
Joe: Yeah, it's really weird. The only place that there's bricks in this house is the.....

(Here, Joe pauses for so long that I wonder if he's having a stroke, and then it hits me.)

Me: The foundation, right Joe? The foundation? Those bricks are falling out of the @#$%^UI(*&^%$ing foundation, AREN'T THEY JOE?

Joe: Yes.
Me: That's structural.
Joe: Yes.
Me: That's four really expensive bricks.
Joe: Yes.

At that point we neatly piled the bricks, Joe got a beer and two codeine/tylenol for his back, and I bumped up my painkiller from cashmere to Bison.

There's nowhere to go but up.

Bugging Out

I just bugged out of the house instead of freaking out inside it, and now find myself down the street in a slightly crappy café, with wonderful espresso, a warm croissant and no internet - which is the only thing that really makes it slightly crappy. (I went to the good café which has all of the above, but it was full, probably because it is the good café. I'll shift to somewhere with internet and post this soon.)   What this café does have going for it is that right now it's not my house. I had to stay long enough for the work to be started and to understand where things were going and what they were doing, and I had to stay while the energy audit was done, but as soon as I could I bugged out of that joint. It's a crazy place. Everything is in the wrong spot. Everything.

Now, I'm not the sort of person that dirt bothers. I'm not. I'm not very tidy, I don't scrub hardly anything unless I'm worried or having company, so you would think that a big reno like this wouldn't throw me much, but truth be told, while I fight against it every minute of every day, deep down inside I am one of the worlds least flexible people.   I don't like noise. I don't like people in my house, I don't like people touching my things or invading my space. I can't bear it if Joe sits at my desk, so people in the house touching my things, messing up my stuff - moving my stuff, cutting holes in all my floors and ceilings and running power tools while smashing out plaster and lathe is a really, really big challenge for me, and Joe called twice this morning to make sure I was "handling it", on account of his belief that I have a history of not managing renovation well, which I suppose might be true if you think that flipping out and attempting to micro manage, interrogate or over-control the craftspeople in your house before bursting into tears and taking a three hour bath with the door locked is an unreasonable response to home renovation... which I do not.

In any case, I was struggling but doing well, and I stood a chance of portraying a normal human until they blocked my access to the coffeemaker and started saying "uh-oh" while peering into the heaps of rubble, and even then I might have made it, had they not accidentally bumped into a wall and knocked down something I love. It's broken, and not fixable and I was upset. They are nice men, they are doing a great job, these things happen, they were not reckless with my things...   It was not worth much, it might even be replaceable, and it's not like I don't have too many possessions anyway, and really, if I didn't want that in the line of fire I should have moved it to protect it and .... well. That's the logical argument.

The illogical part of me however, barely managed to control myself long enough to mumble "It's okay" and to jam my knitting and laptop in my bag and make it onto the street before pulling out my phone and calling Joe to tell him that NOT ONLY are they touching my stuff but now they are breaking it and that the whole house is trashed and that all of our things have been moved - all of them and that the wardrobe in the back room has to be on the other side of the room FOREVER and that it's the wrong side, all wrong, and that I just don't think that is going to work but I have no choice, and there are BIG HOLES in the floor and you can see the rooms below through them and that they are big enough for the cat to fall through, and isn't anybody worried about that? That the cat might fall through? Is anyone concerned? And how about those big saws. Do they need to be that loud? Are they thinking about the wiring? Does he know that shelf by the front door? The one that we keep bike helmets on... it's gone. Now we have nowhere to keep helmets and also we have one less hook by the front door and some of the coats won't fit and really, this means we can never have company again because we're short coathooks and also, that wall was plaster and lathe and now it's all rubble and that made a huge mess and I would vaccuum it up except they're still making more mess and did I mention that the energy guy sealed up the house with a strange fan thing and that .. well, it was weird and the world is weird enough without our home getting weird and did I tell you that they're not just touching all of my stuff but they're touching yours too - and they saw the bulk of the stash and I don't think they were okay with it because the guy just kept pointing and saying "Is that wool? .. Is that wool?" Is that.... more wool?" and you know what? People think I'm crazy enough when I tell them I write "knitting humour". I don't need them coming into my own home and thinking I'm crazy and those people do think I'm crazy and that's making me crazy. It's a circle of crazy.   That I just don't know what to say when people are touching and breaking my stuff and I do know it's crazy, I know it is, but they even went in our bedroom, and they need to move not just the downstairs wool but the upstairs wool too, and that I just can't stand it.

Now, Joe and I have been together for a long time, and he knows that I'm only able to appear normal as long as nobody messes with me too much, and Joe listened to all of that, while I'm yelling and pacing and telling him all of it, and he finally says "Honey? Honey. Are you going somewhere where you won't talk to people and nobody will talk to you?"    So I said I was doing that now, that I was walking to the café and I told him too that those guys in our house blocked off the coffee maker and that the toaster was dusty on the inside now, and that I didn't even know how you got plaster out of a toaster so I hoped that he bloody well had a plan to cope with that, and furthermore... and he interrupted me.

"Steph, you gotta get away from the house and not talk to anybody. Don't go back there. Go to my mum's if you have to, nobody will talk to you there. Go somewhere quiet and knit something. It's going to be okay"

... and as soon as he said it I realized that he was using soothing tones with me, like you do with someone who's way close to the edge, and I stepped back from it. Not all the way, but far enough that I can order coffee without trying to show my server the pictures of the holes in my floor, and from here I'm going down the street the otherway to the pub with the internet so I can post this, and I'm even going to have myself a little afternoon pint, and then I'm going to knit and knit sorting out stitches until I feel better, and I'm going to think about these questions.

How do non-knitters handle stress? I mean, I know they must do something, since it's not like I see them all weeping on the bus all the time, but when everything in their lives is all messed up, what is the thread of sanity and sameness that runs through it and keeps them from being a lunatic?   Does knitting attract people who need something to moderate stress more than others?   Do you think that you use knitting to moderate your behaviour, and in this spirit of this shirt (I knit so I don't kill people) do you think your behaviour would be different if you didn't?

Thoughts to renovate (and knit) by.

Upheaval

I'm on a mission these last few weeks. I know we've talked about it before, but this is my furnace.

It is very old. It is bigger than Utah, takes up just about the whole basement, and it works great. It's an old gravity furnace. It has no fan or electrical parts, so I have heat when it the power goes out, and if our bills are compared to our neighbours, it's actually pretty efficient, which shocks the hell out of me because it can't be true... but we're not spending much more than them. It makes no noise, except for the tiniest little gentle and friendly ting-ping sound of the ducts expanding when the heat comes on, and because there's no blower, it doesn't even dry the air out the way a forced air one does. In short, I love this furnace, and up until the last winter, it's been as reliable as your favourite grandpa.

Last winter though, there were two really scary days (because not having heat mid-winter in Canada is scary) when the thing died, and even though it was simple to fix (Joe did something with a screwdriver the first time, and I thumped it Fonzie style the second) it was also scary because it's not really a repairable furnace. If we can't fix it, it can't be fixed, because the minute a repair guy gets look at that he's going to be obligated to "lock" it for safety. (I don't necessarily buy that - I think they're just scamming to sell and install new furnaces some of the time.) If that happens, we're suddenly obligated to buy and install a furnace on their terms, not ours, and at a time we don't choose. That didn't sound good, so as I type there's an energy auditor here to figure out what we need, and dudes, I'm getting a new furnace.

This makes me happy, partly because I won't have to worry that the extended lifespan of the beast in the basement will run out on a Saturday morning in January when it's -40, because as cheap as this one is to run, the new one will be cheaper and have much, much lower emissions, which is fantastic, and because as much as I love my furnace, it is old, and it does have a hard time keeping up when the weather is really cold... which, as I may have implied, is most of the time here. (We put our heat on only when absolutely necessary and that's usually 8 months of the year. October to May.) It also gives us the option to someday install central air conditioning, which isn't possible with a gravity furnace.

The downside is huge. First, and I'm sure you might know this. Furnaces are not cheap. Mine is particularly not cheap, because it's a shocking thing to have extracted from your home and takes some special handling, and because gravity furnaces work entirely differently than forced air does... I need to have ducts installed throughout the house. Gravity furnaces are essentially big fires - with ginormous ducts that run from it. Two big ones go in the bottom of the furnace, and about six come out the top. Cold air sinks (is pulled down by gravity) through big returns in the house down to the bottom of the furnace,

and it gets heated in the big fire and warm air rises through a central "chimney" which has a few runs to some other rooms, but mostly pumps out heat into the center of the house.

Modern forced air though, has cold air returns in the middle of the house and the heat at the edges... which means that even though my house is full of ducts twice the size of escape tunnels dug out of Sing Sing... none of them are any good and they have to chop up my house and install a whack of them, which is sort of thrilling, because when this is done, we will actually have something that we've never had before, which is the absolute decadence of heat in every single room in the house. (Megan's room is one of the unheated ones, as is my office. We're both pretty pumped.)

The down side to this is that people are coming into our house, they need to move things, go into all rooms, shift furniture, climb in the attic, cut holes in the walls and floors.... and really, I don't know if you've gathered anything from this blog over the years, but I have a really tiny house (like... 1100 square feet) and four of us living here (it was five before Amanda moved out) and it only has two closets in the whole building (built before closets were popular) and I'm not at all the organized minimalist who would do well in this sort of set up and... I can't stress this part enough.

I have rather a lot of wool.

I've spent a week gutting the hell out of the house, destashing (some of my buddies have scored huge) and getting rid of anything that I can to make room for the new ducts and make it possible to move furniture around. I'm living in fear of the moment they tell me to move the wardrobe in my office and that means moving everything in it - and that means emptying it into another space that doesn't have space and...

I hope this is worth it.

Things Finished

1. My plan to have teenagers sprayed with a gas that makes them find the idea of a partner disgusting. I just need to figure out how to invent the gas. The plan is otherwise good.

2. Thanksgiving. Good holiday, great meals, one leftover pie. I shall do my level best to finish that too.

3. One Drops Jacket 103-1 (Bewitching name.)

Yarn: My own handspun. Fleece was a beautiful corridale I bought at the Royal Winter Fair, was processed by Wellington Fibres, and spun into a gorgeous cushy, bouncy two ply (6.5wpi).

Modifications: None really. I'm short, but like jackets long, so I deliberately didn't shorten this, which was kinda lengthening it, if you think about it right. I put on fewer buttons, and I didn't make any button holes, just crocheted some loops after the fact, which is really great because it meant that I got to decide just where I like the buttons while I was wearing it, not while I was knitting it, which to my way of thinking should be a little more accurate.

Overall, I think I love it. It's cozy and light, but warm and comfy. It seems a little dressy, and I like the shape of it, though if I had it to do over again I might do some of the A-line shaping at a different rate. This flares sort of low for me.

I wore it for a walk yesterday, and it felt really, really chic. Crunching along through the leaves with a warm wool jacket on...very autumnal vibe... which is good, because the only flaw I can see with this jacket is that it really is a jacket, and too thick to wear under a coat, so in a few weeks it's going to be too cold to wear it. I'm going to compensate by wearing it constantly until then.
(Furnace not on yet, so perhaps I shall wear it indoors.)