I’m just that much of a help

A few months ago when I was in Vancouver at Knit Social – I staggered up to the Gauge Dye works booth and gave Catherine all my money. You know. As one does.  As I did so, I remarked that she always gets my sock yarn money and my shawl yarn money (yes I have an itemized yarn budget and you should too) and thank goodness that’s where it stops. Her colourways together with the cleverness of self- striping yarn that works for shawls? It might as well be my personal version of knitter kryptonite. As I walked away, I reflected that it’s a good deal that she doesn’t have sweater yarn or I’d pretty much give her all my yarn money, and then a lightbulb went off, and I just about walked backwards to her booth and then I told her.

“If you think about how a shawl works, and whatever magic you run to make the stripes the same length as the rows grow longer – isn’t that” (I said to her, trying not to look as excited as I felt because it’s slightly uncool, while simultaneously pretending I know what math she does)  “Isn’t that the same math as a top down raglan sweater? If you have self striping sock yarn, and shawl yarn, and sweater yarn…” (here I paused for dramatic effect) “…you’d get all my yarn money.”

Catherine looked at me. I looked at her. Then I saw the tumblers start to turn in her mind, and I knew my work was done.  “Make me that” I said.  “I’ll try” Catherine said. “There’s going to be a problem with sizes.” She said that, and I swear I saw here reach for a mental calculator.  “Give it to me in Whistler.” I said. “We’ll see.” She said.

Now, this isn’t the most positive response I’ve had to a yarn demand.  I felt like probably eventually it might happen, but that I shouldn’t get married to it, so I didn’t.  I thought about how clever an idea it was sometimes, and I felt good about telling a really clever person who could actually make it happen, but since I had no idea what had to happen for this yarn to happen, I just thought about it a little bit, like I do other things that I really like the idea of but never happen, like only having one kind of screwdriver.

I got on with my life – until I was at Catherine’s booth at the event in Whistler, and I was giving her all of my sock and shawl money, and she said WAIT, and with a perfect air of brilliance mingled with appealing confidence, she pulled this skein out from behind the booth.

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I started to say something like “Oh isn’t that pretty” or some other standard yarn thing, when I saw her eyes twinkle, and it hit me.

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Self striping sweater yarn.  She’d actually done it. Designed to work with Flax Light (though it would work with any sweater with standard top down construction) in the 1-2 size, you can cast on at the neck and have stripes of the same size appear all the way to the divide for the arms and body. The rest of the skein is blue- for the rest of the sweater, with the exception of the last little chunk, which is green, so you can have a little green at the cuffs, or the bottom band, or the button bands, or the (yeah here it comes) baby pockets.  This is the prototype, but she says she can make more – and I feel like she’s going to need to do that.

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Soon. So, so smart.  Here. Take my sweater money.

*PS WING OF MOTH IT JUST OCCURRED TO ME THAT SHE COULD DO THIS IN OTHER COLOURS.

*PPS. I’m going to need a small loan.

*PPPS No, it’s cool, I’ll just re-finance the house. Never mind.

Long Haul

The top ten reasons I have deleted blog posts to you in the last 2 weeks – along with random photos of where I have been and things I have been doing.

  1. I have been travelling and working a lot, and by the time I find an internet connection to hit “post” what I wrote seems out date and stupid.

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(The Resort at Port Ludlow on the last day of our retreat, when a rainbow broke out of the (unrelenting) rain.)

2. After my last post, someone wrote me an email saying that I should be nicer to autistic people. My response wasn’t generous, and I deleted it. (Everyone should be nice to everyone – which I was, even though the guy was a jerk. I answered all his questions and gave him my hotspot. I am super nice.)

3. One of the posts was about weaving in ends and I almost bored myself to death writing it, never mind posting it.

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(mitten knitting on the plane.)

4. At least three of them just said YES YOU CAN KNIT ON A PLANE.

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(Finished Cloisonee mittens. That I knit on a plane.)

5. I deleted one by accident and in a fit of rage couldn’t write another.

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(Trying to knit a second pair of Cloisonee mittens on the plane when I realized I’d forgotten the white yarn. I had backup yarn for another project but was mightily annoyed.)

6. A few of them were too vulnerable, sad and grief struck. I am generally all of those things right now, but I am trying hard to let those feelings come and go – and writing them down and committing them to the archive felt too much like committing to the dark side. There are times of happiness along with the grief, and because I’ve always believed that you get more of what you pay attention to, I didn’t want to write about grief.

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(The backup yarn. Despondent Dyes : Party like you plan to be home at 9:00)

7. Then I decided that it was wrong not to write about grief, because it’s a human thing and it’s what’s happening and it happens to everyone and shouldn’t we talk about it?

snowyretreat 2017-11-23

(The scene just outside Whistler BC, at the Sea to Sky Retreat by Knit Social.)

8. See #6.

9. Thrown off by #’s 6, 7 and 8, I wrote a really happy one, and then decided (because grief makes you a crazy person) that it was disrespectful to my mother’s memory to be too happy and felt guilty that I wasn’t grieving and deleted it.

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(The inestimable Clara Parkes and me. In the snow.)

10. I was knitting.

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(Sorta mittens.)

PS I almost deleted this because I remembered it was American Thanksgiving and wondered if my post should be about that (even though it is not Thanksgiving here.) I decided not to. Happy Thanksgiving, American friends.  Happy Thursday to everyone else.

 

Going Going

I got up today (I’d say this morning if I believed for a second that 4:30am was morning) and staggered back to the airport, where I was seated in the chair that they’ve engraved my name in, I’m here so much. (That is totally not true but it’s got to be coming.) I was only been home for a few days this week, just long enough to talk to my family, snuggle a grandson, go to a Bike Rally meeting, nail a deadline and wash my clothes and put them back in my suitcase.  I like travelling, I really do, and for the most part I’m good at it. I sort of like hotels, and airplanes are good for knitting on, and I’ve always liked restaurants. (People bring you food and clean up afterwards. What’s not to like?) I don’t really get all that jet lagged, compared to some people I know, and there are usually interesting people and knitters and yarn when I get where I’m going. I know all this, and I can tell you that I am a professional and tidy traveller,  absolutely who you want to be behind in the security line, and I can make 9/10 border agents smile. I show up to the airport early so I can be the nicest person in the joint, and I amuse myself very well during delays.

Speaking of amusing, other than on instagram have I shown you what I’m knitting? It’s Autumn Lace – by Nancy Marchant, of course – and I’m charmed to no end while knitting it, I tell you that.  Two colours of mohair/silk, the green is my old friend Cracksilk Haze in Jelly, and the other is a Cracksilk Haze substitute, Debbie Bliss’ Angel in some brown colour that today I’m calling “ball label in suitcase”.

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I’m having a ton of fun knitting it, and the only thing that I don’t quite love is that every time I get off of a flight I’ve got so much greenish mohair stuck to me I look like I murdered a muppet.  In any case, It’s been me and this fluffy extravaganza on flight after flight after flight, and despite being really good at travel and mostly being cheerful about it, this morning I had another human just about spoil a 5 hour flight from Toronto to Vancouver (one more flight to go, and I’m almost at Port Ludlow) and I have absolutely no recourse but to tell you about it.

I got on my flight, and assembled my knitting, got out my headphones, selected a show, and established my craft zone.™  Everything was fine when buddy comes down the aisle, masquerading as a normal person, and plunks himself in the seat next to mine.  I nod politely, headphones in, and proceed to properly and studiously ignore him. Over the course of the next 5 hours, the following occurs.

  1. Before we take off, dude taps me ON THE LEG and asks me while I have my headphones in, if I have internet (I do) and if I will make a hotspot for him so he can text his sister. I am so stunned by this that I do so. I still can’t explain this.
  2. Dude interrupts me about a billion times (all while I have my headphones in which I thought we had all agreed was the international signal for not going to chat with you) to ask me separately, and always preceded by the tap on the leg –  the following. A) Where do I live?  B) Do I like that place? (This question comes 15 minutes after the first, as a separate interruption. C) Where did I get my glasses? (He has recently learned he needs glasses and is considering Walmart. This is not where mine are from.  D) Do I like the show I am watching? (You may all infer the internal answer.) E) does it bother me that it is a sexy show.  (It is The Handmaid’s Tale. It is not sexy, it is actually sort of the opposite.)  F) Do you have to purchase meals on this flight? G) A thousand other things.
  3. He manspreads his legs so wide that I have little room to exist, even though I am not very big.
  4. He leans towards me, shouldering into my space and forcing me to either cuddle with him or flinch against the plane wall. (Naturally, I choose the latter.)

Finally (although there was so, so much more) he tells me that his mother used to knit, and he thinks he could too, and then (holy cats I swear this is true) he proceeds to explain to me how many things he could make if he knew how to knit, and relates in intricate detail – all absent any actual knitting knowledge, how I could make a sweater if I wanted to. He tells me I would need a front piece, and a back piece, and some sleeve pieces, which I could “sew together” to make a sweater. He draws the shapes of these pieces on his tray table. He says he thinks (like he is probably the first to consider it) that you could likely make many things this way. Making shapes with knitting, and then fastening them together in various ways. He waits, at the end of this speech, for me to thank him (I do not, and it is a little awkward) before he tells me more about his knitting theories, and how many things he knows about it, because it is “common sense” that this is how it would all work.

He stops just short of patting me on the head and says that he could knit if he wanted to, but for (of course) that he has a job to do, and thusly, could not knit on planes, but maybe “some other places” but that most likely he doesn’t have time. You know. I somehow magnificently manage not to point out that he’s done absolutely nothing for the last 5 hours except bother me. Not read a book, not watched a film. Not napped or looked at the inflight magazine for the love of wool. Nothing. NOTHING I almost scream, and then I notice that I’ve been shedding green mohair all over him and for one perfect second, I hope he has an important meeting, and I am quietly happy.

 

Sock about town

Here I am, in London. (I know. Trust me, I feel really lucky.) Here for a bit of work, a bit of play, and a bit of a family visit – Joe and I are getting really good at combining those and making the most of opportunities like this, and that’s what we did yesterday. Long story short, after stomping all over the city yesterday, including a visit to a yarn shop (Knit with Attitude, lovely spot) while Joe went to the Imperial War Museum (not quite my thing) I found myself with a little time to kill before dinner. I consulted my map, realized that the British Museum was right around the corner, and really, how do you miss an opportunity like that?

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The front of that place is fenced off, and you have to pass through security as you enter, and they search your bag. As with most things here, the process is efficient and polite, and in no time at all I was standing in front of the guy, and plunked my largish bag on the table in front of him.  He greeted me nicely, and – waving a hand at a chart of nasty looking things like knives and such, asked me if there was any chance I had “anything like that” in my bag.  I replied that I certainly did not, and he started to poke around in it.  First he moved the two skeins of yarn I’d got at the shop, then pulled aside the scarf I’m knitting, and then the sock that I have for when it’s too dark to work on the scarf, and then said “Yes, looks fine. Just this lot of knitting.”   I smiled, and said “Sorry, yes – it’s quite a lot I know” and knitters, he looked right up, smiled a broad and cheerful grin back at me, and said “Yes, does seem to be a bit more than the national average.”

“I’m Canadian.” I said, not sure why I felt like that explained everything.

“Right.” He replied, and it seemed like he thought that too.

I was emboldened by that, feeling like it was really okay to be a knitter here (even if I’m a little bit more than the National average) and so the next part of my plan was easy. With Canadian grease (that’s “excuse me, so sorry, pardon me, apologies, sorry”) I squeaked my way to the front of an exhibit, whipped out my sock, held it aloft (“sorry, just a moment, thanks so much”) and voila.

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A sock and the actual, real Rosetta stone.

I can’t be the first. If you’re in town, do me a favour and nip down there will you? Let’s get that National average up.

Making Hay

Since last we saw each other, my pets, this little life I’m trying to lead has been on fire. I’ve been trying to “keep busy” since Mum died, and I’ve certainly succeeded, though almost all of this was planned before that – it always seems when I’m booking these things that it’s going to be fine if I just keep it together. Stay organized. I tell myself.  Make a list. I tell myself. Well, I am and I do, but it’s still sort of madness over here. The day after I posted last, I hopped on a plane and went to Knit East, I taught for two days – lovely students, good company, hard to beat the Bay of Fundy for a view, and to ice the cake I got to see Denny and Megan. They’ve both moved away from Toronto over the last few years, and it was such a pleasure to be together like the old days.

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I came home and the sweet little owl button’s I’d arranged for Elliot’s sweater had arrived, so our little guy got his finished sweater. Elliot has just learned to sit, so new and exciting poses are possible for this up-and-coming sweater model.  Here, he attempts a thoughtful, pensive approach…

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…then wonders if it’s what I was after?  (Sweater: Gus. Yarn: Regular old Cascade 220, but indigo dyed by Judith on afternoon we were together at Strung Along. Buttons, Jennie the Potter)

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Three days after landed I was out the door again – this time for the Columbia Gorge Fiber Festival – and wrapped up another pair of socks.

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They go with all my pants.

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Yarn: Mudpunch in “Ambitious Apiary” Pattern: My Good Plain Sock.

I got home from the Columbia Gorge on Monday night, and since I’m leaving again tonight, I made the 48 hours at home count.  I carved a pumpkin with the (grown-up) kids.

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Meg and Alex dressed him up as an Ewok and we posed him with the pumpkin…

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and the leaves.  Just to be seasonally appropriate. (Meg would like you to know we didn’t let him eat the leaf.)

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I finished a hat for Elliot. (Tiny Lumberjack)

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Then we all had a great big family dinner for Joe, because today is his birthday.

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And now I’m leaving. I’m staying organized, and I have a list.