 Yes, that is me with Anne Hanson and yes, I look a little silly and giddy. She is one of my knitting idols. She works up a pattern to perfection and her designs are a wonder. She can also teach a class like a pro. I had a lovley chat with her, learned quite a bit and it was pure pleasure. I started to flag after a while....I hit the wall and was so tired that I ceased to be able to knit so I just listened and enjoyed. I count myself very fortunate to be able to take a class from this woman. She knows her stuff.
The rest of the time I spent at Yarnover was fun as well. I looked at a whole mess of things and touched most of them. I didn't go crazy and buy tons of weird yarn that I will never use but I think it wasn't restraint so much as weariness. And fear of falling over. If there was a crowd around a booth I stayed away because I was sure someone was going to back up into me and over I would go. The interesting thing was that even though my cane was evident and I was kind of dragging my left leg behind me after awhile a few women knocked into me so hard that it scared me. I'm going to blame it on yarn fumes and the craziness that is Yarnover. It was my first big outing and I made it.
The Rant:
I read something that really bothered me the other day. It doesn't matter where I read it but it matters that some people think this way. The words that pierced my frontal lobe were 'I don't care a damn about my LYS. I'm going to buy my yarn at the cheapest price possible.' Oh. Really? This the Wal-martization of America and it drives me crazy. Let's just all go out and buy the cheapest crap possible so we can save 7 cents while our small businesses go down the crapper, shall we? Let's ignore the little guy who is just trying to eke out a living and buy all the things we need, and don't need, at a store where the big cheese is pulling in money so fast that it's a blur. Let's all make his life better, okay?
You know, people who open up yarn stores don't do so to make a huge profit. They do it because they love yarn and knitting and teaching. And they hope like hell to make some kind of profit however small. I wonder if the overworked gal not making a living wage who is shuffling yarn around at WalMart is going to help you with a knitting problem . Is she going to take the time to show you how to cast on? Does she know how to fix a buggered up section of lace? Will she help you pick out sock yarn? Somehow I don't think so. That service is not part of the cheap price of a skein of yarn in that store.
The same goes for small hardware stores, bakeries, tiny cute dress shops and all the other little business where the prices are a little higher but we get the service we used to enjoy. Now it's 'toss that rump roast into the cart on top of the Easter dress and let's get out of here'. I know it's tough out there. I know that money is tight. I know that diapers cost a fortune but really, think about it. Think about what shopping at a giant store who doesn't give a damn about you means to your little Local Yarn Shop. And what it says about you.
I wish my pictures were better. I really do. That would involve another kind of knitting and I'm just not there yet. I'm doing better....just not up and down stairs better. Yet  Ah, yes. I buggered up part of my Kira. Damn it. Things were going along so well that I got cocky and quit checking my work. I didn't notice anything wrong until, all of a sudden, I didn't have enough stitches for one of the lace panels running up the sleeves. It's only a 9 stitch chart and a pretty simple one at that so I thought it would be an easy fix. It wasn't. I took one row out and there were still the wrong amount of stitches. I took another row back and it was the same thing. I looked at it hard and saw that, 20 rows back, I had made some kind of bonehead mistake that manifested itself as just a strand of yarn laying across 3 stitches.
Now, I don't know exactly how things like this happen unless a person is either in a knitting daze or a TV coma. Or gooned on pain pills. None of those applied to me this time so there was no explanation except stupidity. The error was so blatant that I became ashamed that I didn't see it right after I did it. How on earth did I keep knitting and moving my little piece of blue highlighter tape up the chart if I was doing it wrong? Was it the cat? I don't think so. He doesn't have the dexterity for small projects. Were faeries involved? Did some little sprite come out from a hidy-hole in the dark of night and mess with my knitting? I'm going with that. The cat is already mad at me about something else and it beats stupidity.
I found a couple of dpn's and then ripped the whole pattern out 20 rows back. I always get a little shiver of fear when I do that. I'm afraid that I won't be able to figure out where I was or what I should be doing. It's like one of those nightmares one gets trapped in where nothing makes sense and you are only wearing your worst underpants. I hate those. I also hate ripping back a whole sweater so this was the only option that made sense.
It worked. I knit the lace part back up like a pro and now the sweater is done and waiting for blocking. The re-knit part looks a little wonky but I think it will straighten out in the soak. I am so happy to be done with something that doesn't look goofy or have a hideous fit problem. I am also happy that my own self is slowly knitting together because tomorrow is Yarnover and I'm ready for a little more excitement than re-doing a lace pattern.
 Today is the day we set aside to remind us to take care of our planet. Recycle, reuse, re-something. I forget. I believe I do the best I can to save the earth. I recycle, I compost, and I don't throw batteries or ink cartridges into the trash. I try not to use Styrofoam anything. I don't have my lake property clear cut to the water's edge. I don't have a gas hog of a car. I don't throw those dang plastic shopping bags into the trash either. I hate those things and always ask for paper if I am given a choice. I believe I do all I can and it's not that hard.
What gets me to really thinking on this Earth Day is not how to care for the earth but how MY time on earth is spent. What I have done and not done and what there is time yet to do. How to savor what time I have left on the planet. How to make it better for me and how to make it better for others. And how to not feel bad about the things I can't change. Reading this over it kind of sounds like a homily from the pulpit or a session from therapy. I don't mean it to be. It's just what is in my head right now.
I had a long discussion with two people yesterday about my mom's situation and it made me think hard about my role as caretaker and my role as daughter. It made me realize that I take care of the earth better than I take care of myself or my mother. That I don't hold either position gently in my hands.
There has always been friction between my mom and I. We can't talk without some kind of anger toward each other pricking the skin. I don't do what she wants and she doesn't do what I want. There is always a critism that riles me. Always a smart remark that makes me want to pull her hair right at the nape of her neck where it will hurt the most. I imagine she wants to pull my ear like she used to when I was little. Or pinch me in the tender flesh of the inside of my upper arm. This is how it's always been. Two people at cross purposes. Always.
How then to make it better? How to make it so it doesn't leave a scar? How to be the caretaker she needs and the daughter that I should be? It's much easier work to save the earth than to live upon it gently. It's harder than I thought it would be to reconcile mom's checkbook every month. There simply is not enough money. It's harder than I thought it would be to be kind to her. There is always something said that is meant to hurt. There are always lies. Someone once said 'Try to look on everyone with generosity'. That's also harder than it seems. It's easier to look on the earth with generosity and try to keep it's water clean and it's air fresh and pure than it is to take care of someone who hasn't been what you wish they would be. That's not fair, I know. I'm sure I'm not what she wished I would be either but I don't know what that is.
Today is Earth Day and I am trying to do my part to save the earth. I will also try to be a better person with my time on earth. Be generous. Be kind. Don't litter.
 I don't think this could be a more hideous picture. I could have drawn and colored a better one. Sorry about that. The phone in my camera doesn't have a nice lens on it like my digital camera does. And I just can't tromp upstairs and download a picture whenever that fancy strikes me. It will be a couple of weeks before I forget how scary the stairs are. Nevertheless.....this is the new sweater I'm knitting. It's a more beautiful blue than pictured. The color of a tiny, delicate robin's egg. It's a darling design and it's for number 1 daughter. I could see it on her the minute I saw the pattern.
It's called Kira and it's by Cecily Glowik MacDonald. I found it, of course, on Ravelry. I was just perusing the site one day when this sweater popped up and smacked me in the face. Oh! What a darling sweater, I thought. And it is. The pattern is written so well and is very clear. Very concise. I love the little pockets and how they are knit in. I love the sweet lace pattern strip up the sleeve. And I love the little 'wings' at the front neckline. I have some vintage buttons of my Grandma's that I am going to sew on and they will be perfect. So far, I'm on gauge and the body is done up to the bottom of the armhole. Sleeve number one has been started and I feel as though I could finish that today. Oh, it's nice when something one is knitting comes together and there is no angst. No crying and no remorse. No broken needles. The yarn is perfect because, for once, I am using what is recommended. Ah-h-h-h-h.
What a pleasure it is to knit this little sweater.
The List
I have made myself a list. Mostly because I can't remember things from day to day yet without writing them down. The fabulous effects of drugs used during and after surgery. It is a list of things I don't want to think about anymore.....
1) The Dark and Stormy sweater. She needs to go live somewhere else.
2) Netflix. Their policy on what is streamed onto your TV and what is sent in the mail needs to change.
3) Audible. Let's just not go there, shall we?
4) How beautiful is it outside. I can't get there yet. Quit obsessing.
5) How there is really no good TV anymore. Oh, for the days of Gunsmoke.
6) How much I hate all my clothes.
7) All the yarn I have upstairs that I can't get to yet. Knock it off and just knit on the darling Kira.
8) Things I would like to sew for myself. Again, knock it off. The machine is upstairs.
9) How bad my living room ceiling needs paint. And the walls. How the blinds don't work right anymore and how crappy my furniture looks. The curtains suck, too.
10) Sarah Palin. Michelle Bachman. They both just need to shut up.
| | Hubby and I have been watching the made-for-TV movie Titanic. Now, that was a disaster of epic proportions so I really shouldn't compare my sweater disaster to the sinking of an unsinkable ship but it feels like that. Epic. | As I knit more and more, knowing it will never be right, I feel as though I am headed for that iceberg. Music is playing somewhere off in the distance. I can't run. I can only continue to put more stitches into a hideous item of clothing that I know I will hate. I can't seem to stop. I think if I just finish the sleeve everything will be alright. Water is lapping at my ankles but still....I knit. Pushing my walker and dragging my yarn behind me I search for a lifeboat. Somebody, anybody...help me stop knitting this disaster of a sweater that will never fit! Dark and Stormy, an appropriate name for a sweater that is lost at sea.
Why do we do this? Keep knitting on something that is going underwater in a hurry with no life preserver in sight. We know in our heads that it is bad so is it our hearts that keep us knitting along in the face of impending disaster? Do our hearts try to keep up the lie that everything is going to be fine or is it just that they don't want us to be depressed over another knitting failure. Is it our hearts that don't want us to rip the whole thing out and start over when our head tells us we should? I don't know. Why does any part of my body allow me to keep knitting on something that will eventually live in the dark recesses of my closet never to see the light of day? What saves us? I believe this to be an age old question that I can't figure out the answer to....why do we keep going even though the ship is sinking?
Ah, Dark and Stormy, you had such promise. You were supposed to be unsinkable. You with your fancy cables. You with your big snuggly collar. You with not enough life boats. You are going down with the ship.
Today it's beautiful outside. The sky is the blue of robin's eggs and the air has the lingering scent of crab apple blossoms. I can peer out my front window and see hostas spearing up out of the ground and getting ready to unfurl their striped leaves. I can hear birds peeping and cheeping for all they are worth. I want to be smack dab in the middle of it so today I am going outside. I am going to brave the cracked front steps, lean on hubby's arm and take a cane to it. I can't stay trapped in this house for one more day because my Dark and Stormy sweater is sitting on the couch mocking me and I'm tired of it. I'm also tired of being inside when it's so lovely outside. My four living room walls are starting to close in on me and the sweater isn't helping. I think it moved closer to my spot on the couch while I was sleeping.
Ah, the Dark and Stormy.....she is turning into a nightmare of epic proportions. Here I was knitting away thinking I would have a lovely sweater to wear in the fall or maybe on a cool spring evening. Not so. I had been blithely knitting away with the clear, pure mind of a child thinking all was well and that I was going look so cute at some point in the future when I threw it on over a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. This will not be so. I will really look like a damn idiot with a limp and an ill-fitting sweater. And my jeans won't be the same length because my legs aren't. I went from the fuzzy happiness of today right into the harsh reality of tomorrow when I tried the damn thing on. It's hideous.
I thought I had seen all the caution flags on the Ravelry boards and written all the pertinent information down. Seems I hadn't. I didn't catch anything about the sleeves. Damn it. My sleeves are just not right and I think the reason is this: I didn't knit down far enough before I put the sleeve stitches on holders. Consequently my armhole isn't deep enough and my sleeves are not big enough around for the type of sweater this is. Oh, the pattern doesn't really tell you this but I guess I should take my mind of a child in hand and figure this stuff out. Here I had been so worried about whether my cables were crossed correctly or not and I was really buggering up my armholes. Knitting is a chancy business.
My plan is to finish this thing up and then block the living hell out of it. A good knitter would rip the whole thing out right back to the start, begin again and do it right. I am not that knitter. I am the knitter who is going to go outside today and enjoy the wonders of spring. Tomorrow will be soon enough to take on the Dark and Stormy again.
When I was a kid I thought the meaning of the words 'abridged' and 'unabridged' were reversed. I don't remember how old I was or what had been abridged that I was so upset about but I was a peculiar child with odd little reading habits. It might have been one of my mom's Reader's Digest Condensed books. I always snuck off with one of those, read it, and was totally unsatisfied with whatever I had read. Give me the whole story. Please. I know I was always mixed up about those two words because I thought if a word had an 'un' preceding it, it meant the same as 'not'. As in 'not the whole thing'. It took me a long time, longer than it should have, to figure the whole thing out.
I feel as though I am living an abridged life right now. I can't get to most places I want to, I can't carry more than one thing unless I have a mess of big pockets, and if I drop something I can't pick it up. There is always a trail of dropped items for Hubby to pick up when he gets home in the evening. I make a tiny lunch, put it in lunch bags and then stick them in my pockets in order to carry them out to my safe little spot on the couch. A Coke in one pocket and my lunch in another. It's amazing how abridged one's life gets while recovering from surgery. It makes me feel as though I will never again be able to yank my clothes off, pull my jammies on and jump into bed. It's a long, slow process that involves someone helping me first take my socks off. I know I will better. It just takes a long, unabridged amount of time before my abridged life becomes more normal.
And since I am abridged I have had to do things differently during the day to keep me busy instead of jumping in the car and driving off to work. Or hightailing it out of here to go have coffee with a friend. Knitting, of course. And reading. But I also love listening to books. I know I have mentioned that before. And I know I have complained about the lack of library audio books available. So...to help me through this phase I joined Audible. Sigh. And Netflix. I now have to pay to be entertained while I slowly do my leg lifts and ice my hip. It should be fun if it's something I have to pay for. Like a facial or a trip to the zoo. It's not. It's annoying and abridged.
I was very excited to join Audible even though it seemed like way too much money each month to have the privilege of listening to one book. One book a month. Really? Oh, I can listen to more if I want but they, of course, cost more money which I don't have because I'm not working. And the worst part? They are ...gasp....abridged! What the hell? This horror is not mentioned in anything you read before you hit that 'Join' button. Or before you give them $14.95 a month for that one abridged book. See, I finally figured out that abridged just means a bridge between the beginning and the end of a book with not much in between and that that's all the stuff I want to hear. Or read. Now, instead of trying to figure out what words mean I'm trying to figure out what this means. Are we all just so short on time that we can only listen to a shortened version of a book? Oh, I can listen to the unabridged version of New York by Edward Rutherford for $42 if I want to but if I only use my monthly 'credit' I get the abridged version. Bah!
And the same goes for Netflix. Oh, there are no abridged movies but they offer TV series where one can only get the first season and nothing more. I'm now trapped in an Upstairs, Downstairs hell. After watching the first season and getting a good handle on an English accent and a love for having tea served to me every afternoon by Hubby...but only if he is wearing white gloves....I can't see any more of the show. The daughter married an unsuitable man in the last episode of season 1 and I just know it's not going to work out. Hell! The Titanic hasn't even sunk yet. What am I going to do? And how is this being able to watch anything you want at any time like the ads on TV promise.
I do not like the abridged life. I want to read it all, hear it all and most of all, I want to live it all. I want to be Unabridged.
I love to read. It's one of my favorite things to do. I also love to read blogs and I have a list of them that I read every day. The funny thing about blogs...to me...is that they remind me of when I was little and read the back of cereal boxes every morning when I ate breakfast. I always needed something to read and cereal boxes were right there in front of me. I bet I could name the list of ingredients of Corn Flakes if I had to. Blogs are my new cereal boxes and are infinitely more interesting. I've learned so many things from reading blogs. There are knitting techniques that I knew nothing about until I read a blog about it. There are wonderful women who develop patterns seemingly out of thin air like the Rainy Sisters and their finished projects sometimes make me gasp. The Yarn Harlot leaves me giggling to myself all day. She is so funny and tells it like it is when one is surrounded by yarn, a stack of patterns and a penchant for not reading them. She makes me laugh and sometimes that is the best start to a day. My new favorite blog is Thrums. I found this fabulous blog while searching on Ravelry for other people who had knit the Dark and Stormy sweater. I just like to compare and see how things went with their sweaters and if there were any mistakes in the pattern that I could copy. I saw that this particular gal had a blog so, like the back of another cereal box, I had to check. Holy Hannah! I had hit the jackpot. The best of blogs. The biggest of cereal boxes. The most interesting of all. I didn't even care about the sweater anymore.
Time actually thrums when I read this blog. Everything speaks right to me. Feelings that I feel. Thoughts I have had. Things I have said or wish I had said. It astounds me. I almost feel as though a better informed, cuter, thinner, smarter, younger me is writing the blog. Uncanny. Lori, for that is her name, writes with such, oh I don't know, passion for each subject and with such lovely articulation that I almost can't bear it. She gets right to the heart of things, stirs it around, and it comes out as something to stay in my brain for the rest of the day. I've had quite a few insights into some of my own problems just from reading about some of hers. I haven't fixed my sweater yet but I feel I'm in the process of fixing some of what I think about and why. She's also quite funny and that is a big plus in my book.
She has a give-a-way on her blog right now. Leave her a comment and she will put you in the big number generator of the universe for a chance to win a book by the title of City of Bohane. Her description of it makes me want to read it right damn now. Read her blog. It is truly wonderful and will leave you with something fascinating to think about during your day. One of my favorite quotes of her is: think of people with generosity. I will try.
The nice thing about getting older is that one forgets. The bad thing about getting older is that one forgets. I forgot just how miserable it is recuperating from hip replacement surgery. I forgot that you can't move around the house at the speed of light picking up little messes and putting them either away or somewhere else. You're lucky if you can get one thing somewhere else and that one thing would be you. I forgot that it's really hard to go potty because the damn walker won't fit into the bathroom. I forgot that you can't pick up one single thing you have dropped and that I drop things all the time. I forgot just how devastatingly hard it is to get into my bed and that I have to spend most of my time either laying on the couch or sitting on the other couch. I forgot that my cat likes to bite my toes. I forgot that it is such a struggle to get dressed that I end up spending the day in jammies, TED stockings and rumpled hair. I forgot that crying about a ball of yarn dropping off your lap and rolling away is par for the course and that most of the time it doesn't even take that much for the tears to start. And that the whole mess makes one feel like a big cranky baby who needs either a big hug or a good talking to.
I tend to forget that things will get better. I will improve. My hip will heal eventually and I will be able to jump up when the doorbell rings or when my ball of yarn hits the floor and rolls away. I forget that my first hip surgery was 16 years ago and I was in much better shape then. My second hip surgery was 8 years ago and still....not too bad on the recovery time. It's just taking a little longer this time and I have to keep remembering one of my favorite quotes: Time flies whether we're having fun or not.
 This is what my new hip looks like. It fits! Even though it hurts like hell and I am in a fuzzy headed Oxycodone haze I can feel that this baby is in there nice and tight and the way it's supposed to be. I am thrilled beyond reason to have a hip that doesn't slid around like it's been basted in butter. The doc told hubby after the surgery that the joint was not only put in there wrong but it had worn wrong, had cracked and that there was a piece of the plastic that had broken off and was just floating around in it's little joint orbit. Well, really...no wonder I was a crabby pants.
In spite of my new fabulous hip I am still feeling a little anger toward my previous surgeon who put the damn thing in there wrong. What is his responsibility in all this? I feel as though I should write him a note telling him how unhappy I have been for the past 8 years with this bunk hip. How I have had to live tentativly. How I've not been able to ride a bike anymore. How I have been so afraid to pee in the woods. How I have to be careful every time how I sit on a couch. How I have had to suffer through bumpy ambulance rides while gooned on morphine so I can get the thing yanked back into place. How I hated like hell to come to his office after all of these instances only to be told that I shouldn't move like this or move like that or that I should maybe lose some weight. Now really....I weight 143. I am 5'5". How can this be too much for a mechanical hip joint to hold up. I really want to tell him that he doesn't need to pay for my new surgery but that he has to admit he did some shoddy work and that he needs to apologize for saying I was fat. He should really send me a nice card and a lovely flower arangement. He should own up.
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