More to Say

A woman came to my counter the other day to return a set of steel crochet hooks.  She said they were the wrong size, and assuming that she meant too small, I chuckled and said they were very much doily-making hooks.  She replied that they were indeed, but she needed a hook small enough to use in adding beads to a project.  My spider-sense tingling, I breathlessly contained my excitement and asked what kind of project.  Glory hallelujah, she said she was knitting a shawl.  I stuttered out something inane about my own attempts at knitting with beads, and we had something like a conversation about techniques, but all the while my brain was screaming, "Find out if she's on Ravelry!  Get her phone number!"

I fired up the camera, since my Ravelry notebook looked so forlorn with all of it empty boxes.  This is good news for my blog, because these posts aren't very interesting without graphics.

Here you can see the crude beginnings of my cabled riding jacket, which has proven to me that one cannot knit with wool during the dog days of summer unless one is in very good air conditioning.  The Fisherman's Wool is lovely and soft, but not very tightly plied and a rather light worsted weight.  Swatching (I swatched!) revealed that two strands would be necessary to get the stitch gauge, but my row gauge is hopelessly off.  I have no idea how to fix it without affecting the stitch gauge, so I'm just going to have a very long sweater.

I suppose I could attempt math, but how likely is that?

Looking ahead at the bodice instructions flip-flops my stomach.  To make any sense of them I will probably have to chart it out on graph paper with the errata close by.  I've never tried graphing out a whole pattern - only color charts, but it seems like a logical way of going about things.

On that note, I charted up this charming expy of my hipster husband as rendered by Charles Schultz, which I am applying to the Punk Rock Backpack from SnB.  It's turning out to be quite the stash-busting exercise, as I'm able to fill in the colors with some of the various odds and ends that have been kicking around in my bins forever.  On the other hand, I'm discovering that I really hate intarsia.

Which is why I have abandoned my ideas of making a colorwork-focused scarf for my husband's friend Andy, and am instead working up a Celtic Cables Scarf.  He has a Celtic cross tattooed on his back, so I figure that he should appreciate the motif, disappointed though he may be to not be getting the argyle scarf that I hinted at when he originally asked for a handknitted scarf.  The cables promise to be suitably impressive, so I'm not too worried.  I reckon it will be finished sometime in the next 20 years.

Having more or less finished Mirasol, I'm embarking on a new amigurumi, this time in knitting.  It's going to be me!  More or less.  The head is the wrong shape already, but I stuffed it with yarn, because that's what my head is full of.  The yarn is the same Sugar 'n Cream or Peaches and Creme kitchen cotton that I used for Mirasol, and I'm stabilizing the neck the same way I did for her: with a small wooden spool.  The gauge is just a little off, but I like the size it's coming out.  I was inspired by Stitch London and the Science Museum's 2010 Stitch Yourself project, but the pattern I'm using is Yarnigan's Blank Slate Doll, because it was free, and it hardly matters if I'm not sending the doll in.  I've added lots of mods to give the body more shape, which is also affecting the finished size considerably.




I dug out my old Pattern-a-Day calendar and found the pages for Cat Bordhi's Treasure Forest socks and the matching bookmark.  I don't have a suitable yarn for the socks just now, so I've cast on for the bookmark in Caron Simply Soft.

The Esperanza bookmark is growing gradually, with a few stitches jumping off whenever I pull it out of the bag - I need a better WIP storage solution.

Also growing - the Marple Shawl.

I've hit a literal snag with this one - it's so tangled up with the other projects in my bag that I can work no further on it until that is remedied.  It speaks volumes for my laziness that I'd just as soon work on something else as try to free this poor WIP.

Catching Up

My period is a day late.  This is not unusual for my periods, but these days wreaks havoc on my mood.

I cried most of the way home, because for one reason or another all the posts that my friends and Ryan's friends have put up about their pregnancies popped into my head, and I thought, ". . . And all of them will get to have their babies."  I was angry at the unfairness and horrified at my selfishness.

Then I look at my house and think, "This is no place for a baby.  This isn't even a place for kittens."  I am living in squalor, and eventually I'm not going to be able to use depression as an excuse.  Well, I could stay depressed forever, but impressed as I am with my ability to drive while sobbing, I don't want to live this way always.

On the upswing

I'm sorry that my last blog was so bleak.  I am full to the brim with turbulent emotion and letting it spill out is the only thing that keeps me sane sometimes.  It makes room for more.

Here is some good news.

My brother is officially back from Afghanistan for good!

He's my closest brother both in terms of age and being my best friend, and it's a major relief and joy to have him home.  Now he can find new dangerous things to do, like learning to ride a motorcycle and dating.

Susan sent me home with a bag full of yarn and books and magazines.  On the one hand, this violates my yarn diet, on the other hand, I didn't spend any money on them, which is what I was really concerned about.  

Ravelry is amazing.  It is the most comprehensive and exhaustively indexed pattern database I've ever encountered, and I love the inventory tools.  It is very cool to be able to type in a yarn that I have and see what other people have made with it, or see the finished objects they've made of patterns that I want to try.  It's like a social network for knitters/crocheters, but so much more than that.  It's my new favorite website.

I'm almost finished with Mirasol, my Free Spirit doll (pattern by Beth Webber)

Just a few more ends to weave in.  I placed her eyes too far apart, I think, but it gives her a unique look.  She's modeling next to my practice charts for Ryan's mittens.  The name Mirasol is an accidental jumbling of the name Marisol, which I also like, but Mirasol stuck.  I like that in rough Spanish it could mean, "She looks at the sun."  You know, if you smushed "mira al sol" together, dropped a couple letters, and understood that the subject of the sentence was implicit.  As I said, rough Spanish, not good Spanish.

This is a really fun pattern to crochet, very clearly and understandably written.  All of the dolls at By Hook, By Hand look like they're pure joy to make, and I look forward to working up more of them.  After all, once she's finished, Mirasol will need lots of clothes and friends!

A Lost Art

I've been reading my old xanga entries, and wow, I used to write a lot.  Granted, I was young and anguished as young people often are, but I was also creative, spontaneous, and funny.  Where did that go?  Whatever happened to the quirky dialogues I used to write for no particular characters?  They may not have been brilliant, but they still draw laughs from me, egotistical as that may be.

It feels like my mind is one big empty space where it used to overflow with people and places and ideas.  I was always writing, always daydreaming, always somewhere else.  Now all I think about it knitting, because it keeps me away from the dark places in my head, because it keeps me from crying.

I want to cry, desperately.  Every minute that I let my thoughts go, they invariably return to that cold little body that I didn't get to hold for long enough.  My beautiful, broken boy.  I'm sad and angry and ashamed.  It's just a stillbirth, right?  Get over it and have another baby.

I don't want another baby, I want Gabriel.  I want the son I felt moving inside me for all those months.  He was so alive, so active, so . . . real.

I keep coming back to that word.  He was so real.  I had to stop myself several times in the hospital from saying, "He looks so real, he's like a real baby, he feels so real."  Like I was holding a doll.  It, the situation that is, didn't feel real to me.  This wasn't a baby, it was a body.  Of course it's my baby, look, he has my hair, my chin, my nose.  Look at how big his feet are, no wonder those kicks were so strong.  But . . . he wasn't quite real.  There was no soul in that body.  Whatever it was that was Gabriel was gone already, had been gone for three days, if not more.  All that was left was a shell, a corpse.  And we all smiled through our tears and pretended like he was real, like I was holding something more than a dead body.  And I talked to it, and cuddled it, and kissed it, and where was he?  In Heaven, of course, but was he watching?  If there are no tears in Heaven, what did he feel, what did he think when he watched his mother sobbing over a piece of meat?

What does he think now, when I still can't stop crying when I think about him, even though he's in the most wonderful place, in the Presence of God, and I selfishly want him back on earth where there is all this pain and suffering, fear and hatred, and . . .

Kittens.

Are there kittens in Heaven?  Does Gabriel understand the joy of kittens?  Are there trees?  Is there ice cream?

I'm torn between Heaven and earth, and I don't know how to move.

I don't want to move.  Every day, every minute, I'm moving farther and farther from the time when he was alive.  I have to, because I'm human, and I'm mortal, and I'm subject to Time.

Someday, I will have to do this all again.  As everyone so helpfully reminds me, I'm very young.  I have a good ten or more years of healthy childbearing ahead of me.  I'm in love with my husband, and such love bears fruit.  I'll get pregnant again, and somehow I have to bear up through it to the end without succumbing to a fearful paralysis of losing another baby.  And when that curse is broken, what next?

I'll just do the best I can, and miss him always.

Ramblings

Have I mentioned that I love my husband?  I love him.

We went to see the last Harry Potter movie last night.  I only cried a little, though there was a woman behind me who bawled through several scenes.  I felt sympathy for her, but I did the majority of my crying when I read the book.  I thought the movie was nicely done, and wrapped things up well for all that they had to cover their backsides from all the important details left out of previous movies.  The books were so intricately written, with so many points from previous books winding together, that the movies were in over their heads on bringing it all to the screen.

I loved the scene with Snape's memories - it was pretty much perfectly done, much as they had to leave out some parts.  This review is a pain to write without spoilers.

I still don't buy the Hermione/Ron romance as the movies sold it, and the worst part is that the movies ruined it in the books for me too.  Rupert Grint has great comedic timing and is a fine young actor, but he isn't Ron, and the writers never really wrote him to be.  Ginny/Harry wasn't well-handled in the books or the movies, and particularly in the movies the writers clearly wanted him to be with Hermione.  Honestly, I would have liked to see him fall for Luna - how sweet of a couple would they be?

The music was incredible, and the sound-editing was interesting, but I don't know enough about it to say if it was truly good or not.

In other news, I resisted the urge to buy more yarn.  Yay me!

I hereby solemnly swear . . .

A few nights ago while winding down in the hotel in Minneapolis after a five hour car trip, I managed to keep the Hilton's wireless network's (really lousy, Paris, by the way) attention long enough to order five skeins of Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool.  I'm going to bravely and insanely attempt to knit Teva Durham's Cabled Riding Jacket.  Oh yes, oh yes.  I'm going to do math.  I'm going to make one of her crazy designs fit a body that she never conceives of designing for - a plus-sized breastacular post-partum blob.

In efforts of cleaning up my knitting act, and avoiding buying more yarn after this major purchase, I'm committing myself to this vow: once this yarn arrives, NO MORE NEW YARN, NO MORE NEW PROJECTS.  However long it takes, until the last end is woven in, I'm going to finish or frog what I've started.  Projects that are on hiatus because I ran out of yarn will have to wait until the others are done before I buy any new yarn to complete them, but I'm hoping they'll be in the minority.

My first priority is to finish everything that I'm knitting for other people.  To kill time on the way to Minnesota, I cast on for the Half-Pipe Hat for my husband (after ripping out the Pub Crawler sweater I was making for him, after discovering that there was no way I was going to find more Lion Wool in Pumpkin before I got bored of the project), so I'm determined to finish that before starting the Jacket.  I am hopeful and delusional that my yarn substitution will not drastically alter the pattern to the point that I have to give up or restart.  The hat was designed for two strands of DK held together on size 9 needles; I'm making it in worsted weight on size 10.  I'm getting gauge, but it's still coming out very small looking.

After that, I need to finish his flip-top mittens, which only need the ends woven in and the convertible bits tacked down.  I hate finishing, or this would have been done ages ago.

Then there is the dog sweater that I'm knitting for my former coworker Rachel.  Let me just say - I adore Rachel, her dog is sweet, I like dogs, I HATE DOG SWEATERS.  There is something in me that balks at measuring a dog, at knitting for a dog, at a dog wearing something that I knit.  I really do like dogs, but I think they don't wash their hands, as it were.

However, Rachel bribed me by letting me teach her to knit, so here I am, knitting a little purple cabled dog sweater.  It's only acrylic; I don't know how warm it will keep him, but more importantly - it's washable.  And with any luck will be finished before winter, now that I'm dead set on finishing it at some point.

I'm not very good at knitting for other people.

Hats and hats

It never occurred to me that flowers could go in and out of style like clothes or hairstyles, but then I witnessed the rise of the Gerbera daisy.  When my husband casually mentioned that it was his sister Lisa's favorite flower, I thought, "The what daisy?  Did they just invent that?  Can you invent flowers?" and dismissed it.  Then it started cropping up everywhere - at work, on banners, in pots, in bouquets, on the covers of Sarah Dessen novels . . .

And then I remembered the Calla lily.  Three years ago my friend Carlin asked what I thought of Calla lilies, because his girlfriend of the moment liked them, and I said, "What lilies?"   Suddenly they were in all the Easter bouquets and wedding bouquets and on magazines and in knitting patterns and as knitting patterns, and then just as suddenly they faded out.  I thought it had all been rather overblown for a dumb flower, but I've never been very good at trends.  Or at flowers, for that matter.  I haven't had a favorite flower since I discovered tulips in grade school, and when my wedding rolled around and they asked what kind of flowers I wanted I chose irises because just in case we decided that real flowers weren't in the budget, I had a nice origami pattern for irises.

The point being, I made a hat.

I was going to give it to Lisa for her birthday, hence the big pink daisy, but instead of the jaunty little cloche the pattern teased me with, it turned out to be huge and grannyish, and entirely unsuited to a trendy 21 year old.  For a trend-bucking 23 year old, the water's just fine.

The daisy is my own pattern, and one of these days I'll sit down and write it out for the internet's pleasure, just as soon as I remember how I did it.

Lisa did get a scarf that I made from The Happy Hooker; the One Skein Scarf, in the same yarn as the daisy - Knit Picks Swish in Bubblegum, and a cabled newsboy hat from SnB Nation, neither of which did I take any pictures of.  The hat was done holding two strands of wool yarn together, one turquoise and one medium blue, in the hopes that the turquoise would brighten the blue and the blue would mellow the turquoise.  I don't know if it did, but the result was a cute speckled effect anyway.  In retrospect, I wish I had tried blocking it over a plate to see if it would turn out more slouchy, but there isn't much I can do about that now, since it would come across a little odd to ask for the hat back "because I just thought of something that would make it more awesome!"

On that note, here is a whale earbud holder that I made for her two Christmases ago.



It may be the very definition of 'ugly cute.'  I'm not sure that it does Roman Sock's pattern justice, but Lisa liked it.  It was my first Christmas with Ryan's family and I wanted to make something unique for everyone.  Since I didn't know them very well yet, handmade gifts would show that I wanted to put effort and thought into their presents, at least more effort than just giving them cash or gift cards.  Not that I'm knocking gift cards - they make nice gifts, especially for hard-to-buy-for friends and long-distance exchanges.  But for that first Christmas I wanted to make and impression.

For his parents I made this beaded ornament:

I also made the box - hooray for origami, fabric scraps, and glitter!

For Ryan I knitted the rooster hat from Scribblenauts, as we were fawning over the game at the time.  Until that inspiration came to me I had been at a loss as to what to make for him.  The expressions on everyone's faces when he opened it were indescribable and fully worth every stitch.  I cobbled the pattern together from elements from several different sources, and managed to make it all up in under a week - record time!

 Actually, record time goes to the three-day knitting frenzy that produced the Jayne Cobb hat for my friend Alan, seen here with the earflaps tied up out of the way, which is a shame because you miss some of the glory.  Someone told him it looked like a parrot had died on his head, which is the sort of original insult that pleases me.  It means that I have truly created a hat that only a man who isn't afraid of anyone would wear.

It was pure joy to knit and there is nothing to compare to the satisfaction of making a gargantuan pompom, even if it does garner some odd looks when you're making it during a Legal Ethics lecture.

One of these days I'd like to make one for myself.  I think Ryan and I would look pretty cunning in our gigantic crazy hats. . .