Calvin is the gardener here at the small building we’re staying at – or that’s his official title but it seems to us he does near everything.  He speaks English with the same fluency that we speak Spanish, which is not at all.   It turns out though, that some things don’t need words. 

Hank had heard from another Canadian family (this place is filthy with Canadians) that there was a turtle living near here.  We searched for a few days, having only the clues from someone else that it was a turtle, and it was in some sort of box, somewhere off the path.  Mum looked, I looked, Erin looked – and we couldn’t find a thing.  Naturally, it was Hank who had the tenacity to keep looking, and he eventually found the box, which was more of an open concrete square.  (This is one of the troubles with us trying a few Spanish words, and them trying a few English – things can get slightly shifted in the translation.  Last night at dinner the cook told us that the dessert had "scratched" coconut.  Turned out that he meant "grated" which makes sense, sort of, and is exactly the sort of mistake we would make in the other direction.)  Hank was pretty sure that he’d seen the turtle go under the water there, but after we’d all squatted by this pool for a bit, we were seriously beginning to doubt him.  We were asking all those insulting questions that grownups ask kids.  "Are you sure it was a turtle?" "Are you sure it wasn’t something else? Maybe a plant?" (When I think about it now, I’m not surprised that kids sometime lose their patience with us.)

We went back to the pool nearby, and only Erin hung in there with Hank, and after a little while, Calvin happened by and saw them lurking there in the bushes.  Maybe he remembered being a kid, or maybe he just knew there was only one possible reason why a kid would be squatting by a fetid pool of water, or maybe it’s the way that no matter where you go in the world, it seems like kids are just better understood and more welcome than they are in North America, but Calvin walked right over and reached down into the water…

and came up with the turtle. 

Hank was thrilled and vindicated.  Today’s Spanish word? 

Tortuga!

There is a gecko in my bathroom. 

This is more or less fine with me, and absolutely fine with Erin and Hank.  It is not, however fine with my mum, who was briefly cornered by said gecko.

When Erin told her that she couldn’t believe she was afraid of something so small and harmless, my mum replied in true McPhee form.

"I am not afraid of the gecko.  I am simply very uncomfortable around him."

It’s fun to be here with Mum and Erin, but I have to say that for the pure adventure potential, you need yourself an 11 year old boy, and Hank’s my man on the ground.  Yesterday we decided to go on an adventure, and after slathering our pathetically Canadian winter skin with sunscreen, off we went.  We had only two goals. Find out what was beyond the little point near our beach, and buy some food.  We’re cooking for ourselves here for most meals, and that means adventuring to find out what people here eat,  what it’s called and how to prepare it.  So far we really only had coffee, tea, the box milk,  bread, cheese and three apples that we’re pretty sure came from Canada, they were so old and yucky.  Apples, clearly are not a Caribbean thing, but we were so tired and confused that first trip to the supermercado, that we bought them just because they were familiar. They were expensive too – so yesterday I was on a mission to find out what produce was local, cheap and good.

Hank and I struck out for the point – walking along the beach and seeing all that we could see.  In the afternoon the wind comes up here, and the kite surfers come out in throngs.  Hank stopped periodically to survey and count them.

(If it matters to you, as it did to Hank, you might like to know that there were 56 kite surfers) On the way we found a stand that sold iced tea (which is nothing like at home, but "still very good" according to Hank.)  When we got to the little point, it turned out that there were three big rocks, and a guy selling shells.  This was not at all disappointing, since for some time as we walked towards them, we thought there was just rocks.  Rocks with shells was very impressive, comparatively speaking.

Still, we hadn’t found any fruit or vegetables at all and the gentleman and I figured that maybe there were only restaurants on the beach, not stores, and so we struck our way through a posh hotel, and out to the road.  (There is only one road in Cabarete, so if something is not on the beach, it must be on the road.) We walked along (discovering that the bushes next to us were chock full of a million spiders, which we decided to be very careful about, since, as Hank pointed out "we aren’t from here and we don’t know what’s dangerous."  I was pretty sure they weren’t dangerous, but a little danger is a good thing on an adventure, so I didn’t disabuse him of the notion.)  After a while we both of us were surprised to come across chickens. 

Chickens, right there at the side of the road, walking around and doing whatever it is that chickens seem to do, with baby chicks in tow. (The baby chicks were a particularly good part of the adventure, and Hank took this picture so that we could show his Gramy and Mum.)

We both agreed that if we were chickens, we would think that the side of the road was a sub-optimal place to trot around with your babies, but again – we conceded that we know little of the motivation of Dominican chickens (or chickens in general) and that maybe the side of the road was the very best place to be.  "We don’t know" Hank posited, "what is lurking off the road." 

We kept walking, and saw a little stand up ahead on the road, and as we got closer, we talked about what it might be.  Probably a food place, Hank thought (probably because we were looking for a food place) and we started thinking about what we hoped to find.  I wanted avocados (it seemed like they might grow here, and I love them) and Hank wanted a coconut.  "A coconut?" I asked him.
"Yes," replied Hank, with a great deal of seriousness. "A coconut so we can open it and drink what’s inside. You can do that." 
"I know you can do that Hank, or rather, I know it can be done – but how do you do it? I don’t know if we should buy a coconut.  I think they’re hard to open."
"We could google it."
"True." 

We walked along the dusty road with the chickens until we were at the stand, and lo and behold, it was food.  There were eggs, sitting out in little flats, (that made total sense.  All those chickens had to be doing something) and there were indeed avocados, and tomatoes, and cucumbers, and little bananas, and pineapples. Little oranges, and something that looks not quite like a lime but might be (I don’t think it is, but neither Hank nor I had any idea) and this pale green vegetable that we had eaten in a restaurant the night before that was really tasty.  I don’t know what they’re called, but they’re used like potatoes here, even though they’re not really all that starchy.  We bought one because we knew they were good, and we thought we could figure out how to cook it.  Most exciting of all.  Coconuts.  Big green fresh coconuts, sitting right there.   Hank and I immediately began to debate the merits of buying one (if you can’t get it open, what’s the point VS holy cow Stephie it’s a coconut I don’t care if we can’t open it) and eventually the guy who owned the stand took the coconut out of Hank’s hands, tapped it, taught him a new spanish word ("dura") and mimed drinking from the coconut.  Hank’s face lit right up, and right there, the guy got a machete (machetes are very exciting all by themselves) and whacked away at the coconut, then stuck a straw into it, and handed it to a very thrilled Hank.

I paid for the fruit and vegetables (I think that when they tell me the price, I’m supposed to be negotiating. Haggling isn’t really a Canadian thing, and it doesn’t come naturally to us as a people.  Every time someone here tells how much it is,  I just give them the full amount, and then they all sort of smile at me like I’m a happy accident that’s wandered into their day. Must work on this.) and we walked back the rest of the way along the road back to the house, where we showed off our spoils,

and were welcomed home like the conquering heroes that we felt like. 

We found out what was beyond the point,  We counted kite boarders, we found food, we saw chickens, and we got a fresh coconut.  It could not possibly have been more exciting.  Not in any way. 

PS.  Today’s Spanish words: Dura = Hard (that one made sense, once we thought of "durable")  Pina = Pineapple (also made sense, once we thought of Pina Coladas.) Pollo = chicken, Cuanto = how much )

PPS. That was the best pineapple I’ve ever had.

We got up yesterday, my mum, my sister, Hank and I at 3am, and went to the airport.  We spent the day bleary and exhausted, staggering through Toronto, then Newark, then finally landing in Puerto Plata – and the minute we landed we all had our energy back – or what passed for energy until we could sleep, which was enthusiasm.  We were stereotypes of Canadians landing in the Caribbean.  "It’s so warm!" "It’s so green!" "Look! A palm tree!" 

We got in a cab, and immediately noticed two things.  One, we don’t speak Spanish.  We knew this of course, but it was still a shock to realize that me, with my twenty or thirty words of Spanish, was going to be our resident and incompetent translator.  I have words like hola, adiós, Buenos dias, gracias, de nada, beinvenidos, como estas, aqui, agua, frio, calliente, cerrado, banos – which means I can get beer and bathrooms with a reasonable degree of politeness, but is absolutely not enough to say "We would like to go to the house with the pink front by the hotel near the beach after Cabarette" which frankly, is the address we had. (Not quite, but like I’m telling the internet exactly where I am.) Through a series of butchered Spanish words, we managed to get there, mostly rescued by Hank, who somehow remembered the word for "pink" and that nailed it. 
(I have a feeling we have Dora the Explorer to thank for that.)  The second thing that we noticed is that people here drive, by Canadian standards (which is saying something) like LUNATICS. They should all be dead in the streets.  No speed limits here, no rules, no nothing.  Just you in a beat up honda with all your luggage, speeding down the road and dodging guaguas (little buses, full of people and chickens and boxes) and people on little motorbikes, all weaving and shouting and honking.  Nobody is dead in the street though, so it obviously works for them and they have the skills to handle it, and we just have to breath through it. 

We got to the little beach house that will be our home for the next little bit, and marveled at the view, the green, the palm trees and the sea, and got a little bit settled, and then Erin and I got brave, and went to the supermercado (supermarket) in Cabarette.  (The  frightening ride in a cab is here implied.) We saw tropical fruit and a few vegetables we didn’t recognize, and tried to buy milk, which turned out to be a little tricky.  There was white stuff in jugs in the cooler, but it turned out to be yoghurt, but after searching for a while, I remembered that the word for milk is leche, and asked for it.  We were pointed to sealed boxes sitting on the shelf next to canned beans. 

We ended up buying coffee, tea, boxed milk, sugar (that was confusing too) good bread, what we really, really think is cheese – then panicking and deciding to retreat until we could regroup – we grabbed six cold beers and left.  We’ll do better today. We had a beautiful sleep last night, listening to the sea pound right by us, and this morning I’ve found a good knitting spot, and made wonderful coffee.

It’s going fine and I love it.

My mum always said that the first year she was retired, there was no way she was spending the whole winter in Canada.  (She actually said something with more filthy language, but I won’t repeat it here. The winter can get to people.) True to her word when my mum retired this year she promptly booked herself a beach house in the Dominican Republic for a month, right in the middle of this winter.  Then the campaign began.  She got my sister to agree to go with her for a few weeks, and then started on me. I declined.  Actually, I didn’t decline, I flat out said No.  Absolutely not.

I told her that I already had to be away from the 15th to the 20th of February, because I’m teaching at Madrona, and that I had to be home for the rest of that month because I’m hoping to be around when Katie’s baby comes.  I told her that I was away so much for work that there was absolutely no way to justify being away for play.  I told her that I felt okay about being away from my family when I was earning money, but that I wasn’t okay with being away when I was spending money, and furthermore – we couldn’t really afford it, especially if we were talking about spending it on only one member of the family.  I told her I was glad my sister was coming, that I hoped they had fun, that I would try to go another time, and I tried to bury the conversation.

My mum countered with some good arguments. She said that I hadn’t had a proper vacation in fourteen years. (This is true.)  She said I could go for the first week, and still go to Madrona. (This was also true.) She pointed out that since I would just be paying for the flight, it was even the cheapest vacation I could hope for. (Also true, damn her.)  She said that I was a valuable member of my family, and that this was a good idea, and that she didn’t think anyone in the family would mind me doing it for myself.  (I didn’t think that would be true.) Finally, she said that if I was thinking about doing this with her at some time in the future, I might want to take a look at the birthdate on her passport.  (Also true, but I don’t like to think about that. My mother will be fit, alive and travel-able forever.)  Then she let me bury the conversation.

At Christmas, my mum played dirty pool.  I hadn’t told Joe that I’d been invited, because it was so completely out of the question (in my mind) that there was no point in bringing it up.  I’d made up my mind anyway.  Suddenly, we’re all washing dishes in the kitchen, and my mum turns to Joe and says "Joe, don’t you think Stephanie should come to the Dominican Republic with us?" and Joe turned and gave me a look. It was that "Oh, so it’s like that again?" look that he gives me so often, and without missing a beat he turned to my mum and said "Absolutely."  Just like that, without knowing when, or for how long, or anything about it. 

I was furious.  I don’t know why, but I felt tragically misunderstood by him in that moment, and as soon as we were alone that night, I brought it up.  I told him about the money, and the time and the guilt and that it was a TERRIBLE idea, and said I couldn’t believe that he had sided with my mother – that she was a force to be reckoned with at the least of times, and now this?  Now I was going to have a big fight with my mother, and he’d destroyed at least half of my very good arguments.

Joe, the way he does, let me run on.  He listened carefully, and then thought for a minute, and chose his words carefully.  "Steph" he said.  You’re batsh*t insane."

I stared at him. He went on.  "You’re nuts.  It’s a vacation.  People take them all the time.  It’s good for you. You’d love it.  You’ve never done anything like this, and you should go, and it will be amazing.  Leave.  Book a flight.  Leave."

I asked him about the kids.  "I’ve got it." He said.
I asked about the money. "We’ve got it." He said.
I asked about the time not working and how it made me feel guilty. 
"You’re not getting it." He said.

Right after that they all ganged up on me, and the bottom line is that even though I still feel funny about it, I’m leaving for the Dominican Republic on Monday.  When next you see me write, that’s where I’ll be blogging from, and so today I’m packing two suitcases.  My flight leaves Monday, and I arrive home on the 14th, and I have a 10 hour turnaround before I’m out the door to Seattle in the morning, so I’ll come home, put down one suitcase – have a little sleep, and then go out the door with the other.  

I’m not so sure I’ll be good at this, and I still have terrific guilt I don’t understand, but I’m going to try. 

I’ll have the blanket with me.

1. I just finished reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  I didn’t love it, but I did like it.  Here’s the thing though.  The book uses creative typesetting to convey a lot of what’s going on.  Blank pages, pages with one word on them, four pages of numbers, a page where the text becomes closer and closer set until it’s ultimately overlapping and illegible and is then followed by a few dark pages. There’s different typesetting for different characters – for example, the grandmothers writing has more space between words and letters, each thought has it’s own line… more like poetry really.  When the grandfather writes, there’s little punctuation, seldom even indentation or separation for paragraphs.  There’s even photos.  It’s an interesting idea – typesetting in a way that’s extremely graphic to further convey what the author intended. 

2. I am suddenly extremely confused about the people I know who "read" this as an audiobook.  I bet they don’t even know that a big chunk of the book was graphic.

3. Does that matter? Is it still a good book? Is it as good as the author intended? What’s missing? Is it even remotely the same experience?

4. I should really be knitting the blanket.

Last night I looked at the blanket middle and I decided the only reasonable thing I  could think at that point.  I decided that I was never going to finish, and that the sooner I accepted that this blanket middle was what I was going to be knitting every evening for the rest of my life, the happier I would be. I gave up.  I accepted my destiny. Resigned myself to boring little lace diamonds on garter stitch and let go.  I stopped even trying to finish.

Ten minutes later I was done.  It was like the blanket just wanted my humble admission that it was in charge and I was a mere puppet in the plan it had for our destiny, and as soon as I admitted I was powerless it released me. Tonight I start the border, and only other knitters will understand that after the monotony of knitting a big square, the idea of moving on to the border is as exciting as finding first a hundred dollar bill – and then a 50% off sale on your favourite yarn.

Things are looking up.

I have about twenty rows to go before I’m done the centre part of the blanket. I don’t know how that can possibly be true, because at the beginning of the weekend I had about eighty to go, and I know for a fact that I’ve knit at least 398 rows since then.  I feel like once again one of those invisible knitting black holes has formed near my work, and is sucking the rows into deep space as quickly as I knit them.  I’ve taken to tying a piece of yarn to every tenth row, just so I can hold a little faith.

When I’m done the centre, I’ll pick up stitches all the way around and begin the border.  I wanted that border to have motifs and a pattern that represent this baby’s heritage and the families it comes from, and to be wonderfully unique, so this weekend I finished charting it, and knit a swatch to make sure it works.  (I’m making this blanket up as I go along, and since I have no time for mistakes, I’ve taken to desperate measures like swatching and that "planning" that I hear so many good things about.)

I’m also going to warn you, that when I start knitting the border, I’m going to stop giving you photos of the blanket –  or at least I’m going to stop giving you photos that show anything discernable. This isn’t because I don’t want you to see it, it’s because I want it to be a surprise for the family, and even if I could get the parents not to look, I happen to know that I have a mole. (That’s right Kelly, I’m looking at you.)  The only way I can keep security tight and avoid leaks is to go dark.

Maybe I’ll think of a way to make blurry blanket photos interesting.  Perhaps it’s all in the lighting.

Once upon a time, there was a knitter living in a house in Toronto, and she had a few problems. Mostly these problems were related to things like the three pounds of feline rage that lived with her, the way her husband couldn’t tell time but hadn’t been able to admit it over decades, and what it is like for you if your daughters are young women and all of your best parenting ideas are illegal. (This knitter had put forth solid, reasonable arguments for microchipping them, building a cage in the basement at the onset of adolescence or simply putting the entire family in a medically induced coma until their daughter’s brains were finished developing – and had been shot down on all fronts, thus leaving her with the only parenting option left to her, which was to try respect, reason, patience and intelligence.  It was going well, but was exhausting.)  This knitter had some other problems too, like that she drank too much coffee and had a hard time putting an outfit together, but mostly, things were pretty good… except for one thing.  The knitter had periodic, unpredictable episodes of idiocy, where for no reason at all, her usually reliable wits would leave her.  As a general rule, this hadn’t effected her relationships or parenting much, because almost everyone has episodes like that, but from time to time it had really bitten her hard on the hind parts in the knitting department.

Such was the case yesterday morning when the knitter in question decided that she couldn’t live with "the line" in her knitting.  She ruled out the possibility that she had reversed right and wrong side rows (there would have been an absent or extra row of knitting, were that true) and she checked to make sure that the yarn didn’t look different because she’d blocked it (that wasn’t it either) and was then left with the absolutely firm and clear knowledge that there was absolutely a difference between the two sections of knitting, that this was absolutely a difference that she could not live with, and that she was absolutely going to have to do something about it.  Unfortunately, perhaps as a result of blanket induced stress (which can be quite difficult to bear, depending on the deadline and nature of the blanket) it was at this exact moment that the knitter experienced one of the aforementioned periods of idiocy,  and as she looked at that blanket, knowing something was going to have to be done,  her throat tightened, her hands clenched and just like a row of startled birds, her wits departed her, and she decided that the only reasonable thing there was to do in the world (because it was the first ball of yarn that was the wrong one, you see) was to rip out the entire blanket, right back to the first stitch and start again.  This (rather reasonably, in your writers opinion) made the knitter want to find out what other people see in Tequila.

Now it just so happens that this knitter has a relationship with "The Blog". The Blog is a bizarre creature made up of a multitude of consciousnesses, that lived in strange parallel land only reachable by something called Wi-Fi.  The knitter had a small box of all knowing, and that small box had Wi-Fi and the knitter could use it to call upon The Blog.  She wrote a letter to The Blog, and told it that she was feeling terrible about having to rip back, and The Blog replied the way it does, with a sea of voices all providing answers at once. Now, having hundreds of opinions at once sounds overwhelming, like some sort of bad episode of Star Trek, but the knitter had the knack of it, and knew that she had to largely search for themes.  She knew that while the voices of The Mighty Blog would be many, they would be more or less divided into several camps, and they were.

When The blog replied, there were those who said that the problem didn’t matter.  That nobody would notice, that the baby wouldn’t care, and that the knitter must choose (should she value her sanity and liver) to let go of problems such as this, and roll right on.  The knitter almost always disagrees with this camp, mostly because she can be a little bit picky, but also because she has high standards for her own handmade things.  If, say the knitter had done her very level best to get rid of The Line, and the blanket still had a line? She might let go and move on, but to give up without trying isn’t in this knitters nature, and it isn’t as much the line that would bother her, as the idea that she couldn’t be bothered to spend the energy to fix it when she knew she could.  Also, during this process, this faction of The Blog helped her to realize something important.  The baby wouldn’t care –  and that’s when she realized that the blanket wasn’t really a present for the baby, but a present for the parents and family, and while they probably still wouldn’t care, at least that made more sense.  Even though the knitter doesn’t agree with this camp, over the years she’s come to appreciate it, because it’s a necessary and equalizing source of balance that keeps her from getting too much validation from the next group, which would likely turn her into an even pickier and more obsessive nerd than she is now. 

The second camp are the voices of the collective Blog who agree with the knitter, and offered support for her obsessive nature,  her perfectionist tendencies, and her direction. "Yes" this group of voices mutter.  "Yes, you must rip it back and you are not crazy.  Do it.  Do it and cry, but do it."
The knitter likes these voices, because who doesn’t like voices that agree with them – but has learned to be careful.  People who are like you and think like you often make the same mistakes you do.

Then there is the group that believes errors are inevitable, and a mark of a handmade object and that and that nobody is perfect, and cites The Amish, Muslims, The Navajo and various other cultural groups (depending on the voice)  that embrace imperfection (intentional or unintentional) as a mark of humanity.  The knitter appreciates these voices, but has never trucked much with the idea – only because she is going to make enough mistakes that can’t be fixed to qualify as human, and thus feels compelled to fix what she can.

Next up, the knitter considers the voices of The Blog that are creative problem solvers of the highest order.  These voices support the very intelligent and positive design principle that says that subtle differences in construction or colour (like The Line) are problematic, and that one very good way to solve them is to make the subtle difference obvious, and thus more congruous.  This facet of the hive mind suggested things like embroidering over the line, running a ribbon through the line or other such embellishments as to make The Line appear intentional.  The knitter read these with great interest, but ultimately rejected them, since they would change her idea of what the blanket should be in the end.  (She did, however, give a nod to their brilliance.)

Finally, as the knitter assessed the voices of the blog, she read something that stopped her dead in her tracks, and made it perfectly clear that her wits had departed her (which, as so often happens when your wits are gone) she hadn’t really known.   These voices said something that could work.  These voices extended hope.  These voices had come up with a solution that could keep the knitter from starting over, and preserve her sense of dignity and hope.  These voices said (collectively, and with variation) If the bottom part is the problem, and the top part is both bigger, and okay, why not take off the bottom, and knit more onto the top?

The knitter stared at this, and then the blanket, then resisted the urge to beat herself senseless with the nearest solid object, and realized that it was perfect.  She had begun the blanket with a provisional cast on so that she could rip it out and have live stitches to pick up at that end…

so what was the problem with snipping a thread and picking up the stitches as that thread was unpicked across the row…

and therefore removing the bad part, leaving her with stitches held for later, just like she had meant to do anyway?

Nothing. Nothing at all. It would mean that she had an extra chunk to knit onto the top, but that was a heck of a lot better than having the whole thing to re-knit.   As the knitter worked this voodoo, she contemplated the fact that without The Blog, she would certainly have (considering that she was clearly without her wits) have ripped back the whole thing, started over, and then (when her wits returned today) would have realized that she had trashed the entire blanket for no sensible reason and would had no choice but to investigate that Tequila, and possibly give up knitting, and definitely have to give up acting like she knew what she was doing in any way at all when it came to knitting…  and the knitter was again grateful to The Blog, and all its voices…  Even the tiny part of The Blog that is actually her Mother, and left a comment essentially telling the knitter to get a grip on herself, which turned out to have been really great advice, which the knitter regrets resenting at the time.

The End

I noticed it about two weeks ago.  There is a line on the baby blanket.  Not really a line, more of a point of change.  The first chunk, maybe 15 or 20 centimetres, doesn’t look the same as what I’ve knit since then.  I’ve been telling myself (every time I stop knitting and see that line)  that this was the result of the light steam blocking I did when I finished the first ball of yarn. I’ve been telling myself this, because I know it’s not a mistake.  I wondered if I’d skipped a row, somehow screwed up the lace, but no.  All rows and yarn-overs are present and accounted for, and there isn’t an extra row either. There is simply a change in the knitting at the exact point that I changed to a new ball of yarn.  The two balls I’ve knit since then are the same, that first one is the outsider. I went back and checked all my ball bands. Same colour, same lot number – so I know it’s not the yarn – it’s like it’s a tiny bit thicker – or fluffier.  I told myself that this was subtle, that this was something that nobody would notice in it after it was blocked and a blanket, but on Sunday when I was teaching, I held  up the blanket, and someone said something.  They could see it.

That night I spread it out and looked at that line of demarcation. Don’t worry, I told myself.  You steam-blocked that first bit, you haven’t blocked the work since then, that’s all it is.  Chill out, and just keep knitting. Your perfectionist tendencies aren’t helping you. I chilled out, I kept knitting.  Today I decided that I couldn’t ignore it anymore.  I’m 12 rows from done, I’ve charted the border, the baby is due in a few weeks… and there’s that line.  I decided to set my mind at ease, and spread the work out on a towel, and hit it with a little steam.  To my way of thinking, since that’s what I’d decided was the difference, this should even it out, and then I could stop thinking about it and worrying about it.

It’s still there.  Exactly at the point where I changed to a new ball of yarn, there it is.  A line.  It’s subtle – but it’s there, and I’m pretty sure it’s always going to be there. 

The  question now, is can I live with it?  The greater question is if I can’t live with it, do I really have time to rip back, do something about the line and move forward quickly enough to finish the blanket before the baby?  (The other question is "What sort of a knitter with 38 years experience at this doesn’t trust her instincts and keeps knitting even though there’s clearly something not right" but we can discuss that particular failing of mine another day.  I think it’s related to being basically optimistic.  It’s a curse.)  I feel a little angry at myself.  (I knew that yarn was different.) Mostly I just feel anxious.  Rip back? Don’t? Live with it? Don’t? 

Every time I think about ravelling this huge body of work, I feel a little sick, but every time I think about looking at that blanket for years to come, I feel sick too.  The idea was to make an heirloom.  Something beautiful, and personal and something that was a good footing to begin a family on – something that  few generations of babies might get wrapped in.  Suddenly I imagine myself 90 years old, holding a grand-niece or nephew, and JUST SEEING THAT LINE.

I know what I have to do.  I just feel terrible about it.