We’ve had a quiet few days here. Erin’s not feeling well, so we’ve stayed close to the apartment, swimming, reading (and knitting, though that’s just me. I did take Hank to town yesterday, and brought him home on a motoconcho – a guy on a motorbike, just for a bit of a thrill.) I took the camera down to the beach in the afternoon so that I could show you the transformation. Every day, the wind is down in the morning, and the beach belongs to walkers and swimmers, but just after noon the wind comes up, and the beach is transformed – the name "Kitebeach" makes total sense.   (Very infrequently, there is no wind – or not enough, although it always seems windy to me, and on those days the beach is full of kiteboarders lying around dejectedly – staring to the East and watching the flags.  It’s sad for them, but those days the beach is ours from morning til night.)

Kiteboarding has boards like snowboards, with straps for your feet on them. You put on a big corset that attaches to the kite, and then control the direction of the kite by pulling on a bar that has lots of strings going to the kite above.

The kites are huge, and they can lift a person way, way up in the air, especially if they get boosted by a wave.  I can tell kiteboarding isn’t for me, because this is one of the worst things I can think of.  I keep thinking I’d be in Haiti before I got down. 

They go back and forth along the waves, ripping out to sea, then turning (somehow… I think you do it the way you would tacking on a sailboat, but I’m unsure. See previous concern about ending up in Haiti.)

They do a mysterious something with the kite, launch into the air, change direction mid-air, and rip back again, repeating the maneouver.

All day the beach is full of instructors and students, newbies and experts, and if you really want to see something, look for the young Dominican guys who were practically born on boards. 

I assume I’d be killed in about 4 minutes, having apparently lingered in the fine motor control line far longer than the one that would give you the skills to do this,  but man… is it amazing to watch.
It’s like a poem. 

So far, I am the first one up every morning.  I’ve taken to drinking some coffee on the balcony, and then heading out for a long walk along the beach before the sun gets too scorching. (This is really only good for avoiding sunburn, it’s plenty hot.)  I walk all the way down to the point and all the way back up, the sea splashing my feet, and me marvelling at the waves.

We are on Kitebeach in Cabarete, so named because the wind and surf are consistent and strong – perfect for kiteboarders.  Dozens and dozens fill the beach in the afternoon, but in the morning, before the wind comes up, the surfers sleep and I walk the beach just about alone.

There is a reef here, a little ways out, and it protects the beach. The waves are still fierce and strong, but it makes it possible to swim – provided you’re a strong swimmer. We see no little kids anywhere near the water here.  There’s an undertow, and getting out is a little tricky – but once you’re past the point where the waves break, you can swim for hours.  (Then you have to come back in – past that point where the waves break again. Yesterday one caught me from behind, knocked me face first into the beach,  folded my legs over my head then rolled me along the sand like I was a shell. The trick, I am here to tell you, is to see that as an emergency. You have to rush to stand up, once it lets go of you, or the next one will really have it’s way with you. If two get you, the third one is sure to, and then you’ll still be spitting up sand and examining your sandblasted knees at midnight.)

By where our little apartment is, the beach is just sand, but farther down as I walk I find rocks, and cliffs of stone for the waves to crash on, and it’s all been carved into wild shapes by thousands of years of waves.

I could watch it all day, and it’s just water.  I’m amazed.

That’s today’s Spanish word.  La playa.  The beach. 

Yesterday morning I woke up early.  It was sort of ridiculously early, and I lay there listening to the waves, and decided that being awake early in the Caribbean couldn’t possibly be a bad thing, and I went and made myself a cup of coffee, and took my laptop to the big balcony that’s on the front of the apartment that we’re staying in.  Hold on, I’m there now. I’ll show you what it looks like. 

Whoops, sorry.  I forgot what you’re mostly going to care about:

(Not sure what I’m making yet, but its Tosh Merino Light, in Bluebonnet. I have two. They are sitting there at the ready.)

We’re right on the ocean, a garden of tropical plants the only thing between me and the crashing sea, and it is beyond beautiful.  Roses, hibiscus, birds of paradise… a stretch of pretty flowers and palms is the only thing that we look over to survey the sea and waves. Every so often a bunch of Dominican guys ride by on horses at a full gallop. They take tourists rides at a slow trot, but morning and evening they give them their heads, and charge along the beach, laughing and racing the horses right along the edge of the surf – waves splashing high around them.  It’s a fabulous view.  So yesterday morning I got up and came out here to write, and I drank coffee and watched the sun come up over the sea, and then I checked my email. A lady named Annabella had written me an letter, saying that she had been here just a few days ago, not quite in Cabarete, but in a tiny town a few kilometres away, and she told me to keep an eye out for Humpback whales. Apparently they swim right by here, 3-5 thousand of them migrating to Samana from the arctic to have their babies and mate.  I thought this was pretty cool, but that my odds were slim. Still, all day I kept an eye to an ocean.

Right before we walked down the beach to dinner, about the time of sunset, I saw something. I told my mum I saw something, and she assured me that it was not a whale. She actually assured me that there are no whales here, that we’ve been here before, and there were no whales, and that nobody talks about whales, and that if you want to see whales, you have to go to Samana. She reminded me that we are in Cabarete, not Samana, and told me that I had whales on the brain because of the email from Annabella.  I told her Annabella (whom I have never met) didn’t strike me as a the sort of person who would just make up some crazy whale story.  My mother laughed.

We took a few more steps, me with my eyes to the sea, and there! A splash! I turned so quickly to say "Look! There!" that I sort of bashed her with my arm a little. This proved fatal to her chance to see it, since she was instantly my mother – reminding me to apologize before anything else could happen, which I did, but… she missed it. Still, I made her and Erin and Hank stand there for ages… standing on the beach, staring at the ocean. After about five minutes, they decided that I was nuts.  They posited that I had seen a piece of the reef, a wave cresting, a bird… They wanted to stop looking. I made them stand there. I insisted. After a few more minutes, my mother pronounced my whale imaginary, told me that I’ve always had a vivid imagination that was easily influenced by suggestion (and she is not wrong, I guess) and we all walked on. 

I walked sort of sideways, so I could watch for the imaginary whale.

We got to the restaurant, and Hank went inside to look at the menu. (He is on a constant search for familiar food.) We stood on the steps, and l noticed a a few guys sitting on the steps in front of us, and one of them was pointing out at the sea.  I told my mum, that guy sees the whale. My mother told me that she was pretty much done with my whale obsession.
Still, we were standing on the steps waiting, and there’s nothing to look at, except for the ocean, and the three of us were doing just that, when right in front of us, a humpback whale leapt out of the ocean, twisted gracefully in the air and sunshine, and landed with an enormous splash. 

It was right there. That’s the spot where it was.  (I took that picture afterwards because even though the whale isn’t in that picture, I was just so stunned that had been there that it seemed reasonable to document it.) It did it like… nine times, and we all stood there in awe and were completely enthralled, and yeah.
I was a little smug.  Imaginary whale my arse.
Thanks Annabella.

 I have warped the time space continuum.  I know that all of you who have tried to do this and failed are beyond jealous at this moment – all the little balls of yarn are wound.  (Thanks for the kind offers to wind them for me, but it’s my job, and I can handle it.)  The secret turned out to be putting on an audiobook and getting an assembly line running, and I did it in shifts.  Wind 40 balls, answer email, pack something, go for a walk, wind 40 balls, make a cup of tea, organize my notes, wind 40 balls, wonder why I didn’t start sooner, regret my own ability to procrastinate and consider becoming the sort of person who never does this to herself… wind 40 balls… actually, now that I think of it, towards the end I got pretty good at regretting, considering and winding all at the same time.  My many, many tiny balls are all sorted and organized, and ready to be taken to Madrona. (Thanks for the suggestion of shipping guys… but the big border in between here and there means that shipping my teaching stuff would cost just slightly less than my next dental appointment, and I get bags for free on the airline.  It’s far more financially responsible to take it with me, as awkward as it sounds.)

I also got my bag for Cabarete packed, and made a valiant start on the stuff for Seattle.  There’s something that’s just crazy about making a decision today about what I’m going to be wearing in two weeks, but I’m starting to wrap my head around it.  Also yesterday, I made a piddling bit of progress on Joe’s socks.

Yarn: STR Lightweight: Pining 4 Ewe, Pattern: Old Joe, I’m knitting the large. Jammed on the closest teenaged foot for clarity.

Joe’s Christmas socks are always last.  There’s something about great, big, conservatively coloured socks that I always put off, and then, considering  that there’s way more feminine than masculine sock patterns out there (especially the way Joe defines them) and the next thing you know it’s late December and I’m getting all sweaty about finishing his, and a lot of years, I don’t make it.  Joe’s always been awesome about this, happy to have socks arrive no matter when they come, but I thought that this year I would make a special effort to get it together early.  (I’ve actually vowed to get a lot of Christmas knitting together early, we’ll see how it goes.)  In any case, I am absolutely determined to bash out a pair of socks for him, first, before anyone else, and that meant bashing out a pattern. This Christmas my Joe thought that the socks I made for his dad (Old Joe) were "fancy".   An idea was born and  Voila, Old Joe.  A sock pattern that I think has everything going for it.  It’s elegant, sinple, easy to memorize, comes in small, medium and large, is unisex and cozy.  Perfect for a bunch of people on my list, and hopefully yours.

I think it looks best in solids or nearly solids, but I’m sure one of you will experiment.  It’s $6, it has nice big charts, and I hope it gets one of you out of a Christmas bind too. (I’m telling you, I think January is the time to start thinking about a Christmas bind.)

With that, off I go.  I still have no decision about the knitting for the trip – beyond the socks for Joe – and truthfully, I kinda hope they’re done before I get there.  A lot of you made a wonderful case for lace, and I was pretty sure that’s where I was going, until Claudia suggested another Color Affection, and I felt a little something give way.  Turns out that may not have totally worn off yet.  We shall see.

A month ago, when I was booking the flight to the Dominican Republic, I sat with my sister and my mum, and we scoured over the calendar, looking for the best dates to come and go.  Mum had the spot booked starting the 2nd, and I had to be in Seattle for Madrona on the 13th, so I said I’d book to come back on the 11th.  I’d land, wash my clothes, sort out my family, do a load of laundry, gather the stuff I need for all the classes, and then relaunch in the other direction, continentally speaking.

Erin talked with the travel guy on the phone and a few minutes later it turns out that it is grossly less expensive to come home on the 12th. That’s a tight fit, I think. That’s going to be really hard – I have a lot to do for Madrona, I should take the more expensive ticket to come home on the 11th, and then suddenly it hit me like a bag of hammers. What kind of idiot pays more money for less time in the Caribbean?  Not this gal.
I told Erin to book it, and she did, and forwarded me ticket and on closer examination, while my flight leaves the Dominican on the 12th, I don’t get home until the 13th and man – is it going to be one tight turnaround. 

I have been trying to figure out how to manage this for weeks. In my heart, I have always believed that I can pull off just about anything if I get the organization right.  I believe this in the face of tragic and repeated evidence to the contrary, but at the core of me I am an optimist, and the few times that this has actually worked has driven belief into my heart that all this is going to take is a really great list, several colours of post-it notes and a spreadsheet.  Yesterday morning I got up, made my list for the day and realized that if anyone else had made that list, I would tell them they were completely out of touch with reality.  This morning I got up and made my list (with the carry over from yesterday- because it was actually impossible) and felt a wave of nausea.  I know it’s going to be worth it, but man. It’s killing me.  I’m determined to get a pattern up – it seemed like good timing, now that I’m knitting Old Joe’s socks (for My Joe) again…

and I am determined to finish Little Lou’s sweater…

although all that needs is buttonbands (and I don’t have the buttons, but let’s slide right by that one, there’s no need to cloud the issue with facts and logic) and on top of that I have to wind just slightly more than 300 ten metre balls of yarn for class materials, print off my handouts (after beating the ¢?§¶•ªº¡ing printer into some kind of ^&(*&^$?¢§ing submission) and pull together a charity event and buy sunscreen and crap I forgot the laundry and prescriptions and …  I have to pick what knitting I’ll take. 

Somehow… that’s the hardest thing. Despite the crazed number of things I have to accomplish, I keep finding myself drifting to the stash and poking through, and I’m on the edge of having someone change my Ravelry password for me to force me to stop cruising the patterns.  I need something small (has to fit in a suitcase) and something interesting for when I have time to focus (plane, beach) and something plain for when I can’t – though I think I have that covered with a pair of plain socks, and the Old Joe ones I’ve just got on the go. They’re simple. Beyond that, the world is my oyster. I have 18 days of knitting to plan. 

Suggestions?

Generally speaking, I am someone who experiences a great deal of guilt.  Now, mostly I don’t mind. I think that a whole lot of the time guilt is there to make you feel bad about crappy things you’ve done so that you don’t do them again.  It’s nature’s little correction system, and I have high standards for myself that I fail to live up to now and again (often) and so it makes sense that I would feel guilty when I blow it.  That lousy feeling is worth avoiding. Guilt, I believe, it mostly there to tell you when you’re doing something bad or being a jerk.  It’s like a warning system that rings an alarm when I’m coming off the path. 

I know that’s not always true about guilt. When the kids were little and summer vacation would end, I would just about weep with joy.  I would be a good, loving and committed mother all summer long. We’d go to the park and do crafts and have no TV and it would be beautiful for the kids, and I wouldn’t resent it all (much) and then the first day of school would come and I’d drop the three of them off and then be the mum in the schoolyard wishing them a happy day and pretending like I was going to miss them… then trying to get all the other parents to high five me and hug the minute that the door to the school closed with them on the other side of it.

Always, while I was trying to kiss some random woman on the mouth in a pure human expression of happiness, there would be some mother – you know the one, she exists in every schoolyard in the world, the mum who says "Oh no. I hate the first day of school.  I miss my children so much when they aren’t with me" and it would hit me like a train. A train with a snowplow on the front of it. Guilt. A big crushing tsunami of guilt that I didn’t love my children enough to want to be with them all the time.  It would always take a few minutes for me to remember the truth. You’re not a crap mum if you think it’s really okay to enjoy a cup of coffee without someone throwing a lego in it. Without someone yelling "SHE’S LOOKING OUT MY WINDOW." I wasn’t a bad mother because I wanted to pee by myself just once or twice a year.  I’d put down the guilt and walk away. I could define good mothering for myself, and I had.  That mum’s feelings were hers, not mine. Guilt is a feeling you’re supposed to experience when you cross your moral line, not the moral line of the lady down the street. 

I try hard not to confuse the first and second types. Is it my moral line, or someone else’s? Is my guilt appropriate? (I let myself down) or inappropriate? (I let that lady down.)  Mostly now that I’m middle aged I have the difference straight, though I have to check in regularly.  Now the only sort of guilt I can’t cope with is the third type. The kind I feel when I get something nice, or luxurious.  You know what I mean? Like when I’m in the grocery store buying organic milk and that bread made with nine kinds of sprouted seeds while wearing my cashmere scarf and new coat,  and the guy in line in front of me is scraping up pennies for pasta, an apple and some carrots for the kid with him, A kid who could really use a scarf at all, never mind cashmere.  You know that kind of guilt?  Sometimes when I talk about this kind of guilt, the conversations I have are confusing to me. They have been since I was little, and here I am, a big, grown up lady and I still can’t cope. 

When I articulate these feelings, this sense of feeling bad and guilty for having nice things, invariably someone tells me that I shouldn’t feel bad,  that I deserve these things, and that I work hard to afford them,  and that I have earned the luxury.  They’re probably right. It’s not like Joe and I are rich. We budget really carefully each month,  making decisions about where our money goes, and why.  If we want something nice, like to go out to dinner, we have to look at the money and make some decisions.  We work hard – we probably do deserve the things that we have been able to buy.  The thing is, and this is where it gets hard for me, who is to say that the guy in the supermarket who was scraping up the pennies –  Who’s to say that he doesn’t deserve the sprouted grains bread too? 

The odds are pretty good that the guy works harder than I do.  Years ago I worked at a community centre for a segment of the population that tends to be low-income, and at risk.  I was way broke back then, and while I had a grocery budget that was ridiculously low (see aforementioned pasta, apple and carrots) we were never hungry.  A lot of these people were. A lot of them would feed their kids and not themselves, because they had to make choices, and here’s the killer. Most of them had two jobs.  A full time crappy job and a part time crappy job, just to make ends barely meet. They were working way, way more hours than I was, at jobs that I think are much harder than what I was doing.  There was a voice in the back of my head back then, and it’s still there now. That voice wonders, if you deserve the money you get, if I earned the right to have nice things, then how come these people aren’t?  Do secretaries work that much harder than the guy scrubbing the toilets at the local? Does a big time baseball player work that much harder than the secretary?  I know it’s complicated, I know that people are going to say all kinds of stuff like maybe that poor person should have gotten an education, or maybe Warren Buffett really is so smart that he deserves billions of dollars, or… I don’t know. A thousand things that make it harder to quantify what people are worth – and all that stuff is true too.

The problem is that when push comes to shove, we’re all told that if you work hard and do what you’re supposed to do then you will get what you deserve, and I think living in a society that believes that? I think that’s gotta feel like total crap if you’re a 57 year old taxi driver working 60 hours a week in Toronto, trying your best to pay the bills. Especially if you’re an immigrant from a war torn country where you were a surgeon. I’m sure, if you’re that immigrant, you understand what happened, and what choices you made, and all that – but I bet it makes that taxi driver want to take people who imply that you straight up get what you deserve depending on how hard you work for a long, long ride with the fare running the whole time. 

I don’t know what the answer to this sort of guilt is. I do my best to spread my good fortune around, I offer time and money to organizations that are working for a society I  would like to live in – I vote for politicians who are mostly going to do work that reflects my belief that you don’t always get what you deserve, and that sometimes circumstances or bad luck conspire against people, and that we all need a society that reflects that.  It doesn’t help much.  Mostly I still feel guilty when I have something nice. I’ve heard the argument that I’m not comfortable with nice things because my self esteem is low.  I’m willing to buy that on some level – but really, it isn’t that I don’t think I deserve a rest, or a vacation, or cashmere.  It’s that I really think that most people do- and I feel bad having something that they’re not, when they’re just as hardworking and worthy as I am.  More worthy a lot of the time.  I don’t even have to put on pants to go to work most days. 

Anyway, I apologize for the ramble.  This whole  thing was brought on by my realization that I hadn’t told you guys that I’m going on vacation next week – and then realized that I hadn’t told you because I feel guilty that I’m getting something nice.  Something nice I totally worked for, saved up for and earned – and still have really, really complex feelings about.

Guilt. Got any?

1. Yarn done.

2. Sweater nearly done.

3. Not really.

4. The baby getting the sweater.

5. Why he is getting a sweater.

6. Any little that likes all my jokes can have anything they want.

7. Don’t tell that to my kids.

Thanks so much guys, for all of your amazing comments and compliments yesterday.  I promise I’ve gotten more out of the blog than you have, but it’s absolutely charming that you feel like it’s a two way street.

Onward! As you will recall, when we had last seen our intrepid knitter (that would be me) she had decided to knit Little Lou Hoo a sweater, then, following a poor experience with a gauge swatch (fine. It was a sleeve) had thrown a minor hissy fit and turned her back on commercial yarn.  There’s nothing like a failed gauge attempt to knock the will to knit right off of you.  I decided to change to handspun, and started spinning the singles right away.

I’d talked to a few spinners, and checked in with my common sense, and I felt pretty confident that if I spun three big, full bobbins, that when I plied I would have enough 3 ply handspun. I did exactly that, but something weird happened.   I plied together my singles,  then sent them for a lovely bath to take the last of the oils out of the wool, and to set the twist.  Think of it like a kind of blocking.  After the skeins were washed I pressed most of the water out of them in a towel, then snapped them a few times to sort them out, then hung them over the railing to dry.  Dry they did, and in the morning I got a bit of a shock.  My skeins looked short.  They’d absolutely changed length, and when I picked up the skeins to play with them, I figured out why. 

This wool is merino.  Merino is super, super crimpy, and crimp in wool is like curl in hair.  I’ve got curly hair, and for a while I had this hairdresser who (I believe) thought my sister was really good looking. (She is.) We both went to see him for our hair, and he was always trying to convince me to straighten my hair like my sister’s. He was always saying how nice it would be, and how I would love it. (I had to work a great deal on not taking it personally that he obviously preferred her hair.) One time I broke down, and after he cut my hair I let him blow dry it and brush it all straight.  It was totally creepy – and really long, once you took the curl out.  For the whole rest of the day I kept passing mirrors and saying hi to my sister before remembering that it was me.  By three in the afternoon I’d decided to wash it to bring my curl back, that’s how freaky it was. I jumped in the bath, dunked myself and whammo, curly girl again.

Wool works the same way – and this is merino top.  Roving is carded fiber, the fibres are all jumbled, and then sold in a rope… but top is combed fibre. All the individual strands of merino have been combed so they are all parallel, and the process works a little like a hair straightener. (It still comes in a rope though.)   I spun them while they were straight, and plied them while they were straight and then when I gave them their bath, they stopped being my sister and started being me, and all the crimp came back, and the yarn shrunk up – and there you have the most squishy, scrumptious, deliciously soft and bouncy yarn….

and not enough yardage.  It’s crazy, because I can pick up the skeins and slip my hands into them and when I pull my hands apart the yarn is so stretchy that it’s practically an elastic.  It’s like I’ve spun a hair tie or something. It will stretch out to the yardage I was expecting (or closer to it) but then when I let go, all that crimp pulls it back in. I love it.

Now, mark my words, it just so happens that I believe that I have already spun enough yarn for this baby sweater. 

(I have the skeins on the floor because when I picked them off the rail they were a little damp. I tossed them on the heat vent to dry them all the way. Do it all the time. Works a treat.)

I keep picking up the three skeins I have and giving them a big squish and thinking that it has just got to be enough, but in a moment of tremendous maturity, I have decided to spin a little more.

The pattern says 360 yards, and it’s written by a nice Canadian who wouldn’t lie to me, so I’m going to take Alexa’s word for it and spin a little more.  Then I am making a sweater. I am so excited.

(PS. In the interest of honesty I feel compelled to tell you that I may have already started a sleeve. Just as a swatch. You know – just to be careful. I’m not starting before I’m done spinning… I’m just checking.)

On this day of the year, nine years ago, I sat at our family computer and stared at a blank page for a good long time, then looked up at Ken and said "What now?" 

"Blog" he said. "Just start. See what happens." I did. I wrote my first blog entry. It took hours. I had trouble putting a picture in, and I needed a lot of help. Ken had set this blog up as a present for me, and although there are a multitude of reasons why Ken is a fine and fabulous friend, he deserves to be sainted for what he did to make the blog go over the rather sharp curve of my learning over the next few months years.

I had no idea what I was doing, and I don’t just mean the computer part. Back then, everyone was a blogger.  I wanted a blog so that I could be part of the huge knit-blogging community – man, it looked like so much fun.  I was right about that. It is fun – but it has turned out to be so much more.  It has been the gateway to all of you, and the amazing impact you’ve had on my life. It’s made me a better writer, and definitely a better photographer. (I cringe at those early pictures.) It has brought no end of incredible people and experiences into my life and my career, and I honestly can’t imagine not doing it – and what, and who my life would be missing if I hadn’t ever done it at all. It has been a remarkable trip, and remains the best gift anyone has ever given me. Beyond all that, and that is so much, it is more.

Some families have photo albums. We do too – and framed pictures of us on the walls. The girls at different ages, Hank as a tiny baby.  Our parents, our siblings, trips.  The one thing missing is pictures of me. There are so few, compared to the millions I take of everyone else.  I’ve started trying to fix it over the last few years. Handing over the camera to other people in the family, asking them to try and get me in a picture or two, or trying to buck the urge to shimmy out of every picture the minute the camera comes out.  I hate it.  I hate how I look and the strange way my nose is, and my glasses, and I’m heavier than I wish I was and I always look so clumsy and awkward to myself.  It’s like when you hear your own voice recorded, and it’s always strange? Everyone thinks "I sound like that? That’s what you’re all hearing?"  I’m forever seeing pictures of myself and thinking "I look like that? I am walking around and that’s how I look?" It’s enough to make you avoid it forever, but the truth is that when I flip through those albums, it is like the children have a ghost mother.  Especially when they were little. There are so many pictures of them, hundreds of Erin and Hank, and me? I’m the nowhere mum. 

I’m not comfortable with this. I’m not comfortable with my absence in those pictures, and I’m not comfortable with being in the pictures either, but I am trying, because while I am never, ever going to wish there were more pictures of me… I bet my grandchildren or great-grandchildren will.  I love the pictures I have of my Grammy.  I miss her, and I wish I had more. It helps me remember the smell of her and the sound of her and what she thought and did.  It helps me hold onto who she was, even though she has been gone for so long.

I realized this morning though, as I celebrated nine years of blogging by flipping through my own archives, that I am not the Nowhere Mum. 

I am here.   I wrote it all down, and so many of our family stories are here, and when my daughters or granddaughters want to think about who I was and try to remember how I smelled or what I thought about them, or what I thought about when they were growing up, they won’t have just a few pictures of their awkward and clumsy mum.

They will have this.

Happy Anniversary Blog. Thanks for nine years. I wouldn’t have written it without all of you here to read it.

Thank you.  For everything.

Sam has been trying to get us, to wear matching outfits for years. I don’t know what her fascination is, or why she’s so keen on it.  Maybe it’s a weird throwback, some sort of attachment that hasn’t quite been cast off in the wave of "I don’t want to be anything like you" that is growing up, but she loves the idea. She doesn’t want us to wear the same outfit entirely (except for the footie pajamas she thought we should get at Christmas, an idea that had all the chance of working that I have of being mistaken for Beyoncé) but she does regularly suggest that we get the same shirt, or the same coat… I can’t explain it. It’s an odd little quirk.  I’ve asked her why she likes the idea, and she always just says "Because it’s awesome?"  She’ll suggest a matching outfit, then smile to herself like it’s the most satisfying idea in the world.  Then I shudder and we drop the idea. I’m middle aged. She’s 18. One of us is going to look dumb if we get the same clothes.   I have stressed several times that we will not be getting matching outfits.

The other night Sam was headed out the door and complained that she didn’t have a hat.  (She said this just like I am a negligent knitter/mother, rather than that she is the negligent teen who loses them.)  She was going out and  I was staying in, so I told her to take mine. Remember mine? It’s Wurm, knit out of Cascade Eco+. I love it.  She grabbed it, and went out and came back and said that she really, really needed a hat, and that she needed this hat.  We had the standard chat about how my things aren’t her things, and then, suffering some sort of maternal pang of affection for the little hat-stealer, I decided to knit her one.  (Truthfully, I figured making her a hat would increase the life expectancy of my own.)   A few questions later and it turned out that she really liked my hat exactly – and I remembered that I had enough Eco+ left over from Hank’s sweater.. so two evenings later – Sam has a hat.

Pattern: Wurm.  Yarn: Cascade Eco+ in "Ranier" Eight repeats instead of ten. Otherwise, knit just as written. 

I gave it to her this morning as she was leaving for school, and asked if I could snap a few quick pictures. She was grateful for the hat, and thrilled that it matched her coat, and extra happy it had arrived today. (It’s super cold and snowy.)  As she tugged it over her ears, and looked up at me, a broad smile spread across her face.  I said "Oh, you like your hat, I’m so glad" and the smile became epic.

"WE MATCH!" she beamed, and off she went. 
I can’t believe she got me. I never saw it coming.