Safely arrived in Mexico – only to find that it’s a bit chilly – which is to say that instead of the -20 at home, it’s 23 here.

Not quite warm enough for swimming, and there’s a terrific wind. Still, at the risk of being sandblasted, my mum and I stood on the beach and drank our tea, and looked North. Both to see if better weather is blowing down, and because no matter how nippy we are here, we’re just going to be glad we’re not there.

It’s a good day for knitting.

Boy, are things every moving fast around here. I got home from Madrona Monday night (Well, technically it was Tuesday in the small hours) and hit the ground running. Yesterday was Sam and Lou’s birthday, her 21 and him 3, and a good time was had by all, I think. Sam had her favourite dinner with the whole family there, and I’ll have to see my little guy when I get back.

Get back? Yup. I’m out the door again. This time for what has become my traditional winter trip with my Mum. It’s Mexico for us again, and today I’m dumping sweaters and scarves out of my suitcase, and dumping shorts and tee-shirts in – although there’s one scarf I’d like to take with me. Fox Paws.

It’s done, and I’m so in love with it that even a tropical climate can barely dissuade me from wearing it.  I blocked it when I landed in Seattle, and it was dry in time to be worn all over Madrona.

It got the proper number of compliments, and how could it not.  What a beautiful thing. Absolutely worth the fuss.

Pattern: Fox Paws, although I only did 4 repeats across- to make it a scarf, rather than a wrap. It was a good move I think, this size is more practical and wearable for me.  I knit until it was longer than a full chesterfield, I’d say it comes in at about 2m long (that’s about 6.5 or 7 feet, for my American friends) and it’s the perfect, perfect length.  I’m glad I didn’t wimp out.

Yarn: Rowan Fine Tweed, in Arncliffe, Keld, Bainbridge, Tissington and Dent. Two balls of each – with a good bit (about 8g) left of each ball when I was done. Needle: 3.75mm.

I’m in love with it. I could take pictures of it all day, and it’s currently hanging over a chair in the living room, where if I thought the cat would stay off it, I’d leave it – just as a piece of art.  (As it is, if she puts a single claw to it, I’ll have her killed, so for both of our sakes I’ll move it.)

Having a scarf like this makes me almost glad it’s winter, although not glad enough to not be thrilled that I’m off to warmer climes.  This time tomorrow I’ll have knitting in hand,  bum on the sand, and toes in the ocean.  For now, I’ve totally got to wind some yarn, pack a bag and polish my Spanish. I can’t wait to have an adventure with my mum.  Last year we learned to snorkel. This year? Who knows.

This is a quickie, since I’m just changing planes in Vancouver before flying to Seattle, for the annual textile party that is Madrona.  (By the way, if you’re around, I’m signing books Friday after class, and if you bring yours, I’ll sign them. I don’t think there will be any for sale, so bring yours, or a bookplate, or something. I’ll sign anything. Almost. I have a few standards yet.) I can’t wait to get there. I’ve been doing Madrona for years and have a soft spot for the event that’s hard to explain, but I’ll tell you about it as we go along, and maybe you’ll get an idea.  This morning I packed two things of note. First, an unblocked but totally finished Fox Paws.

Fox Paws is seen here yesterday one half cat short of a chesterfield, at the exact moment that I realized that I could totally finish if I blocked it at Madrona, so I charged off and totally crushed it.  I finished really late last night (don’t talk about what time, it makes me want to nod off where I am) and it’s tucked into my bag, and it will have a swim and a pat when I arrive.  I can’t wait.  The other thing I brought with me? One of the reasons that I was so anxious to finish Fox Paws.

That yarn totally needs to be a size four sweater by Monday night.

Don’t panic early. It’s going to be fine.

(PS. I’m aware the blog has been up and down, if you’re a tech type, the problem is that the HTTP keeps deciding to be unresponsive, and has to be restarted. I’ll look into why when I land and have a chance to get on the phone.  In the meantime, try not to worry too much. It comes back up after a bit.)

No, Fox Paws isn’t done. It was supposed to be – or at least I thought it would be done today, and maybe it would have been, if things hadn’t gone a little pear shaped. (By a little pear shaped, understand that I mean that me and that piece of knitting have suffered an insult to our relationship that I’m still struggling to work through.)  I was knitting along, minding my own business, packing for Madrona in my head (which is not as effective as actually packing, but you know- it’s a start) and all of a sudden, it stopped working.  Now that I’m used to it, Fox Paws has a rhythm I can see.  There’s certain points where I can check in, and know if I’m spot on, or if something’s come off the rails. There’s spots where decreases line up, and increases go on top of other increases, and now that I’ve learned where those landmarks are, it helps a lot. If I get to one of those spots and things aren’t working, then I know I missed something, and back I go – just to the beginning of that repeat – or the last place it all made sense.  So, that’s what happened this morning. I got to a place where I check in, and it didn’t check out, and so I swore gracefully (I’m getting good at it) and tinked back, and had myself a little do over.  Still wrong. Back I went again, and still wrong. I tried a few more times, and then figured that I’d done something really stupid a few rows back – something like knitting four together instead of five, or missed a little yarn-over. A klutzy little manoeuvre that left me short a stitch.  I looked for it, didn’t find it, and in the grand tradition of knitters everywhere, I fudged. I did one less decrease so that it would start lining up again, and carried on. This – for the record, didn’t work. Things stayed screwy, likely because I’d compensated in the wrong spot, and a few rows later, when I was just about out of my mind trying to get back on the horse, I saw this.

Yup. A dropped stitch. See that little cream coloured one that’s in the wind? Rat bastage. At that point I did the only mature thing. I contemplated some sort of ninja fix, decided I’d come too far to have it be less than perfect, and I ripped out several heartbreaking rows.

This, my friends, is the reason why some knitters drink in the afternoon, which I didn’t do, but I understood the urge completely. A considerable amount of time later (really, really considerable) I had it back on the needles, and it was working again.

Still, that little episode cost me my only knitting time today, and so instead of being finished, Fox Paws is one small curled cat length short of a chesterfield, and I can’t spare any more time to wrestle with it. I’ve got workshops to prep for – and the Madrona Teacher Talent Show for Charity to finish pulling together (and I still have no talent – apparently not even for knitting) and well. The idea that I’d get on a plane on Wednesday wearing this bad boy is starting to be pretty freakin’ unlikely.   All because I dropped one stinking stitch.

Today, knitting and I have a pretty dysfunctional love-hate thing going.

Can’t talk. Knitting Fox Paws.

Two more repeats accomplished, and the end is truly in sight.  I’ve got a scarf I love the length of, and it’s just about the length of the cushions on the chesterfield, so when Fox Paws covers that distance, it’s done. (Maybe plus a little bit. It’s not like you want to wimp out when you’re making something that’s taken this long.)

Still, I need to make a pair of socks, and Lou’s Birthday is coming, and I have another scarf to knit and… c’mon Fox Paws. Let’s tango to the finish line.

Today is better. I’d say that everything is smoother, and it’s all evening out, but the truth is that last night I made a determined and clever decision to care less. It’s easy, when things are chaotic and wild to start thinking that if only I had my scene together, the world would just smooth itself out.  Another list, two more post-it’s another tremendous effort to pull it all together – nope. A bunch of this is simply beyond my control, and I’d do well, I realized to remember that.  Some parts of life are just a ride you’re on, and you really can’t get off until the next station. Until then, you just smile, nod, do the best you can to be cheerful, and wait until you can high-tail it out of Dodge. That’s my plan.  In the meantime, a miracle has happened.

I’ve continued to work on Fox Paws, and it’s been this… thing. it’s something I knit on, something I like, but it’s been going so slowly that to imagine it as a finished object would have been folly.  I’m not making a scarf, I’m just knitting Fox Paws.  It’s sort of like  yoga or something. You go, you do it, and it’s pleasant, and it’s a thing that you do, but it’s not like there’s a finish line. A time when you’ll have accomplished yoga, and you’ll stop and do something else.  Fox Paws has been like that. The finish line seemed so far away as to be an unlikely goal.  Last night, that all changed.  On a whim, for no reason other than I felt like it, I draped it around my neck in between rows.  Really, I was more reinforcing that idea that I wasn’t making a scarf than anything else, but lo and behold, it’s actually pretty long.

It is long enough that for a second, I could see the future. A future where I am not knitting Fox Paws, because the exercise actually ended, and I got a scarf. I scarf I wear on my body!  I took it off and measured, and I measured a repeat, and I thought about how long it takes me to knit a repeat (tip: a long time) and I realized that I’m eight repeats from done. Eight. That’s it.

It prompted this amazing thought, something I’d given up thinking about 20 minutes after I started knitting this.  I think I’m making a scarf.

How about that.

It would seem, my friends, that I have once again developed a case of RMT (Reverse Midas Touch) in which everything I touch turns to …well. Insert your personal opposite of virtual gold here.  Decisions thought made have come unmade, everybody seems to be changing their minds on things, the oven light burned out* (actually, about nine lightbulbs in the whole house burned out all at once – it was like a movie where a demon moves in) all our things with batteries are dead, the washing machine smells funny, this morning my computer took leave of its senses and forgot its password for the mail system (really? REALLY?) the thing we did to the roof to try and fix the ice problem really, really didn’t work, the cat doesn’t seem quite right, I can’t find any of my subway tokens, my bank card stopped working (stupid chip) and I’ve had to show a remarkable amount of personal flexibility to cope with it all, which is not exactly my strong suit. (By “not my strong suit” I mean that I’m about as good at is as worms are at the hand jive.) Case in point, my computer froze about five minutes ago and ate the entire big post I had written.  I am spending a rather ridiculous amount of energy on not going completely bananas and I have responded to this in characteristic fashion.

I’ve resumed knitting Fox Paws.  If there was ever a knit that could give me a sense of order out of chaos, this is it. I can’t explain why fussy knitting would fix things being too fussy, but such are the mysteries of the craft. I’m going to keep knitting on it until I stop feeling like I’d be a danger to others if I put it down.

*It really isn’t a tragedy that the oven light burned out, but how trippy is it that I’m 46 years old, have cooked a lot my whole life, and that’s the first time it’s ever happened. I actually had to look up how to change it. I swear I’d never even considered the possibility that they burned out.

It wasn’t going to work. She could see that now, as she looked at the shrinking ball of yarn beside her – and compared them to the number of stitches left to cast off.  Her hands almost shook as she squeezed it again, trying to estimate how much yarn was left.   The trouble had started two days before. The knitter was making a shawl out of handspun.  She’d found the pattern on Ravelry, sitting there, paging through the results of her search, getting up from time to time to pat the skein drying on the radiator by the back door.  There were lots of good options, I mean, there always are when you do a Ravelry search, you can lose a whole day to just choosing, but in the end it was the Moab Shawlette that she’d settled on.  It was simple, and had the comforting oatmeal look of garter stitch, and a simple geometric border on the edge that was charming.  Best of all, it was perfect for handspun – written for it, in fact.  All you had to do, the pattern said, was knit until you had half your yarn left, and then work the border. Easy enough, the knitter thought, and when the wool was dry, she’d waltzed over to the little drug dealer scale she kept in her office for just these moments.  A quick weigh in, and she was off.

A garter stitch shawl moves pretty quickly. Before too long she was just about at the halfway point, and after double checking her stitch count, she pulled the trigger on the border.  It felt like a million bucks – and when knitting feels good like that, it flies. Something wasn’t right though. The border was supposed to take half the yarn – so at the halfway point, she should have had half of the yarn left, but she had a funny feeling. “Knitter’s intuition” she thought, and wondered how many times she’d ignored that feeling. Probably a thousand times, maybe two thousand. That feeling you get when you’re knitting and you know something’s gone wonky, but you keep going, because why? Because the knitting faeries are going to come down in the night and fix what you know  is wrong? She looked at the yarn, she looked at the chart, and she decided that there was no freakin’ way that this ended with her sobbing into a coffee cup while thinking “Why did I keep knitting when I knew it wasn’t right?” She assessed the chart, and decided to cut a few rows out. “Better safe than sorry” she said to the yarn.

A few hours later, it was clear that things weren’t working out – that ball of yarn was shrinking really fast, too fast too work. There was no way the knitter was going to pull a dumbarse rookie move like running out of yarn – not when she could see it coming. The yarn shortage was like a truck bearing down on her. A big truck.  She pulled out an arms length of yarn, and tied a knot in the strand. Another length, another knot, until she had a bunch.  She started her next row, and every time she came to a knot, she untied it, and make a mark on a post-it. Seven.  At the end of the row she had untied seven knots, so it took seven arms lengths to knit a row.   She sat there, running the yarn through her hands, counting arms lengths.  Her instincts were right at the end of it. She had enough left for about eight more rows – that was it.

Looking over the chart, it was easy to see where to start. She’d work four more rows, then skip a few, then do the four rows of the edge. Simple – she started the row, then caught herself on the edge of a cliff.  The cast off row! She hadn’t counted the yarn for the cast off row – she started to tink back, one stitch at a time. That would have been bad. She would have run out for sure.  Almost smugly, she adjusted the pattern again. Two more rows of pattern, then the four for the edge – that would leave two rows worth for the cast off. “Plenty,” she thought, and with a nod to the yarn that said something like “What? Do I look new to you?” she embarked.

A while later, the smugness had faded. She’d finished the knitting and was about to start that cast off. The little remainder of the ball blinked at her, electric blue and tiny. “Uh, oh” she mumbled, and her husband looked up. “Yarn trouble?” he asked. “Maybe” she said, and thought about it. This is handspun. There is no more, nor any way to get any. If she’d misjudged this – man, would it suck.  There would be nothing for it but to go back – she re-checked her math. No – she hadn’t judged anything. This wasn’t a gut feel thing, this was a math thing. She’d measured the yarn. She’d measured how much it took to do a row – there was enough. Actually, there should be MORE than enough. She’d allotted two rows worth for the cast-off, even accounting for knitting more loosely as she finished, there should be lots. She looked at the yarn, and gave it fond little pat. “I’m keeping the faith” she said, and Joe looked over again, one eyebrow raised.

Many minutes later, the knitter paused, mid-cast off, and said something filthy, and then “Are you kidding me? ARE YOU EVEN KIDDING ME?” She’d glanced sideways at the yarn remaining, a huge mistake really.  If you’re going to keep the faith, then keep it, don’t peek and second guess yourself. It’s the opposite of faith, but still, that’s what she’d done, and it didn’t look good. She was afraid to stretch out the little bit of yarn that was left. “Wing of moth” she muttered, and imagined what came next. If she ran out, she was going to run out with just a few stitches unbound, maybe 20 – or fewer,  out of 300.  When that happened (“when”, she thought, “not if”) she was going to have to unpick the whole (*&*^%$$#ing cast off – then tink back a row, then cast off again and the whole edge would be wrong.  Should she stop now? Was it even worth trying? She spread the stitches out on the needle and tried to see how many were left. About half.  “Nerves of steel” she muttered, and kept going.

Thirty stitches later, then forty – she wasn’t out of yarn yet, but the length of what was left was shrinking at an alarming rate.  Sixty, then seventy – by now she had only about forty to go, and that length of yarn was so short that she was already planning the epic temper tantrum that she was absolutely going to have if she ran out. The farther the yarn went the closer the finish was going to be, and she couldn’t even imagine the size of the fit she’d pitch if she ran out with five stitches unbound.   Her phone dinged and she looked at the text without putting down her knitting. A friend was offering advice. “Knit really fast, that will help.”

Intellectually, that advice is crap. You can’t outrun yarn. Emotionally, however… she picked up the pace. There was no reason not to try. Fifteen stitches to go – her hand stroked out the remaining centimetres of yarn. She thought about the whiskey bottle in the kitchen. She thought about stopping there, because it would almost be better not to know. You know what they say about not going to bed angry. Losing a crazy game of yarn chicken wasn’t exactly going to be calming.  On the other hand, who can sleep with a game afoot?

She knit one stitch. Predictably, this used up some yarn. Another – then another, until there were only a few left, and all of a sudden it hit her. It was going to work. She wasn’t going to run out – she was going to make it. “Holy %^@&!!” She said aloud, startling the cat.

She knit the last few, pulled the tail through the last stitch, and laid the knitting on her lap. “Holy )*&*%$!!” she said again, and put her hands on it, holding it down like it might fly away.  “What just happened here?” Joe said, looking at her a little funny.  “I won!” She exclaimed.  “I didn’t run out!”

“Did you really think you would?” he asked, and the knitter just looked at him.

“OH YEAH.” she said. “OH YEAH.”

“That, was a close one.”

Mic drop. KNITTER OUT.

Have I mentioned to you (maybe not, because I still can’t quite believe it myself) that this year I’ve expanded my commitment to the Bike Rally? Maybe because I have trouble saying no, or maybe because I really, truly think that they’re changing the world a little bit, I agreed to be on the Steering Committee for the thing. It’s been a pleasure so far (if you like hard work, which apparently I do) but this last few days it’s taking more time than I thought. (This has a lot to do with my almost criminal inability to work a complex spreadsheet, and I’d rather not think about it. There’s a reason I keep my pastimes analog. Knitting? I can freakin’ ALWAYS work that.)   In lieu of a proper post, as I head downtown for another meeting (at least I can take a sock) I give you the last few days, in fibre pursuits. Enjoy.

See you tomorrow, and by the way? Thank you for the wonderful comments on Friday’s post.  I read them all. (Really. Always have.)

Dear Blog,

For Christmas last year, Ken gave me a very nice bottle of whiskey, appropriately called “Writer’s Tears”. I’ve been waiting for what seemed like an appropriate time to open it, and I just did. I’ve poured myself a tiny celebratory dram, and am sitting down to write to you.  I have done this (sitting down to write to you, not the whiskey part) thousands of times over the last eleven years. The very first time was January 23rd, 2004. Ken, in a move I still think was self-defence, gave me this blog as a present.  (I suspected then, and still do now, that as much as he likes knitting, he desperately wanted me to have someone else to discuss it with.)  That first day, I sat down at the computer, in the dining room – that was where we kept it then. We didn’t have laptops, just a big honking family computer in the dining room, where we could see what everyone was doing online – and I had a cup of coffee, and this crazy laminated sheet of paper beside me that had all these HTML codes on it.

It took me hours to write that first one. If I had known what I was starting, it would have been even more angst filled.  I wrote the words, then painstakingly figured out the HTML, and then hit post. In that moment, gentle readers, I swung open the doors to my virtual living room, and it was a decision I’ve never regretted for a moment.

In this house, we think of you as The Blog. I know I’ve told you that before, that even though I know that you are real people, and real individuals, and even though who comprises the blog shifts and changes from year to year – to us you are The Blog. To us, you are like a flock of birds, wheeling and existing together, swirling round and making a big community that we think of as a unit.  “What does the blog say?” “What will the blog think?” “I can’t wait to tell The Blog.”   I know that technically, the blog is the thing that I write, the posts that I put up. The collection of all the digital moments and ideas that I collect here, but that’s not really how we think of it.  I know I write a blog, but to us, our whole family, there is the blog – what I write, and The Blog, and that’s the people who read it.

In the eleven years that I’ve been doing this, my family has changed. My kids were little when I started, and now they’re grown women. Hank was three the day I wrote the first blog, and now he’s taller than me. (Some of you may have missed it, but Hank comments on the blog now. I don’t even know how that happened.)  Some people who were part of it are gone, like Tupper, and Janine – and some others have joined us – like Lou, and Myrie, and I cannot think of those losses and gains without their stories being all mixed up in The Blog. There’s pictures of them here. The moments that they left, or the moments that they arrived are documented, with all of the pain and the joy,  and all of you were here when it happened. You are, somehow, even though most of you are strangers to me, part of our family’s story.

Other than the actual family that surrounds me every day, The Blog has been the most important force that I’ve ever reckoned with. There have been people in my life who don’t understand this. They’ve called The Blog my imaginary friends, or internet friends, and if there was any chance that they would ever understand, I would try to explain.  You’re real. Your impact on my life is real. The changes you create, the good you do, the support for the things that I try and do and feel, is real.  The Blog is a thing. A real thing.

This morning, I reminded Joe that it was my Blogiversary. “Eleven years!” I said.  “Wow.” He replied.  “How do you want to celebrate? Would you like to go out to dinner?”   I thought about that for a moment, and then I said “No, that’s silly. It’s a silly thing to celebrate. It’s okay.”

Joe looked at me, and he said “I’d argue that The Blog changed our lives Steph. That’s not even a little silly.” He smiled, and he left, and he’s right- except about one thing. He shouldn’t take me to dinner. We should take you – and if we could, I’d pour you a little of this (very, very nice) whiskey, and I’d say this.

Thank you.

For being there for me when bad things happened, and for being there when it all went right. For watching my kids grow up, and for the way that your kindness and criticism have shaped our family.  Thank you especially for occasionally recognizing my children in public, and giving them the general impression that The Blog was watching them.  I think they made better choices because so many people cared. Thank you for celebrating births, and comforting me through deaths, and thank you for meeting me in random cities all over North America, when I was on book tours, and bringing me sandwiches and bottles of beer, and making me feel like I was tethered to real people, and real things as I navigated a surreal experience (or eight.) Thank you for coming to the real events we can share together, like classes and retreats. Thank you for always answering the question “Is anybody there?” with a resounding YES, and caring about the things that other people in the world sometimes think are silly. Like bind-offs, and buttonbands, and making things with your own two hands instead of buying them at Walmart, and thank you, thank you always, for your generosity to us.  We love you.

A toast then, as I lift my glass. Ladies and Gentlemen, please be upstanding, and know that you are remarkable, you are valuable, and you are a force. You are The Blog. My Blog, and your hand in my life is not now, nor has it ever been, inconsequential.

Cheers, and thank you for for eleven years. To Ken for starting it, to you for making it a thing.

Peace.

Steph