Enchanting Juno

Still life with Dawn.

Fleece.  I tell you, it's been a fast trip from my first response to spinning - along the lines of "Get thee behind me, Satan" - to this.  Yes, that would be a roasting pan full of corriedale lamb fleece and a salad spinner waiting to have its destiny forever changed.

Washing fleece is fun - it is magic, you put this greasy mass into the pan, squirt it with Dawn, fill it up with hot water, let it sit..I love the dense, sculptural bubbles that form in the wool fiber, like a soapy head in a child's bath...then rinse, repeat and presto, shazam, alakazam...pretty, fluffy goodness.

See?

But I am not all that sure what to do next.  Spin from the lock I guess, since I don't have combs or cards....yet.    I've been reading Margaret Stove on spinning fine yarn from Merino, and clearly I have a lot to learn.  She makes it look a whole lot easier than I expect it will be.   I had never previously thought the sight of a perfectly even wool single running from someone's hand would induce in me a feeling of envy and despair that is physically sick-making.   Always good to meet a dark place in your soul.....

My confidence would be higher if I hadn't royally fucked up a couple ounces of targee last weekend - I think I didn't listen to what the wool wanted to be and ended up going way too fine and hard for the fiber - because I am better at drafting consistently for a finer yarn than I am for a medium/small one - even though I preferred the way the fiber looked spun quite a bit softer and fuller.  The targee is beautiful - a deep, glowing, soft, pure, white with a bit of halo around it.  It deserved better than what I did to it. 

I can't even show you.  I'm too embarrassed. 

It was as if I had forgotten the little I've learned so far and was trying to force a result I haven't earned.  I must try again.

In the meantime, I'm spinning some 80/20 Corriedale/tussah I just love - the preparation, which I don't know enough to identify, has left a lot of visible crimp in the roving and it blends really attractively with the irregularities of the silk.  I am working hard to make this softer - not so much to the touch, but in how I handle it - and spin so that I end up with a 2-ply that is at least DK.  It's uneven - much more so than I would like - but I am trying to not rush. 

The angora/silk/merino was very accepting of twist, the targee almost resisted it - if you let go of the spun end where it entered the orifice, it immediately unspun completely.    The silk/corriedale is somewhere in between.  So much to learn, so much to learn.......

I spent a good part of last night pre-drafting 4 ounces of this blend into two huge and lofty bundles.  I like to roll it all into a huge ball, which I find aesthetically appealing and extremely soothing and pleasant to construct.  But I was so busy diving right into the basket to start spinning, I forgot to take a picture for you.   I like corriedale a lot - with the understanding that I know I haven't tried a speck of everything there is to try, I really think it is a nice fiber. 

This might dye really well.  Do I want to learn how to dye?   

Huh.

I'm knitting away on Lotus Blossom, which looks wonderful and is a terrifically designed and written pattern, but again, I sort of forgot to take pictures.  I really like the silk/wool Blackberry Ridge fingering weight.  Maybe it would be a better shawl if this was a drapier yarn - and drapey is the last word I would use - but it is really beautiful, the silk gives great depth and shading to the color.   I need good light to show you properly - I'll try tonight.

Never in her life will she be so busy again.

A Bluestocking Knits tagged me for a meme a week or so ago.  I love the name of her blog - bluestocking is one of my favorite archaic words.

BLUESTOCKING pronunciation: 'bloo`stâking a woman having literary or intellectual interests. 

(Although why it can't be literary AND intellectual interests, I don't know.  I suppose it might be too much for our delicate brains.)

From Webster's 1913 Dictionary:

1. A literary lady, a female pedant. [Colloq.]

Note: As explained in Boswell's "Life of Dr Johnson," this term is derived from the name given to certain meetings held by ladies, in Johnson's time, for conversation with distinguished literary men. An eminent attendant of these assemblies was a Mr. Stillingfleet, who always wore blue stockings. He was so much distinguished for his conversational powers that his absence at any time was felt to be a great loss, so that the remark became common, "We can do nothing without the blue stockings." Hence these meetings were sportively called bluestocking clubs and the ladies who attended them, bluestockings.

I just think that's charming.  I particularly enjoy the fact that Mr. Boswell's definition hinges around the attempt of bright women to meet conversable men.  I expect that was true for some, and why not? But I also expect that many were there to meet conversable intelligent people, regardless of sex.

Also the fact that Mr. Stillingfleet wore blue stockings.  Even allowing for an era of more flamboyant men's clothing, that seems a bit contrived.  I suppose he might have just had a fancy for blue.  But equally well he might have been creating an image.  I'm thinking eccentric dress, a soulful look...perhaps a volume of the latest verse.

The meme: 5 Things I Miss About Childhood.

Proviso - generally speaking the further I get from childhood the better.  Really.  That being said....

1) The way summer was special.  The way that Three Whole Months stretched in front of one like infinity after the last day of school.  Summer should still be special, dammit, different from the rest of the year for reasons other than just greater sweatiness.

2) The way I used to be able to read for hours twisted up into a pretzel-like knot - feet against the wall, head handing down off the side of the bed.  If I tried some of these positions these days, I'd put myself in traction with the dismount, for sure.

3) Being small enough to hug my dad round the waist - you know, looking up to this man like he could do anything and being young enough to believe that this was possible.

4) My aunt B's house. It was sold after she died, when I was in college, but it was this huge rambling place on the water in Connecticut and really was my idea of Home when I was a kid, always another corner to explore, an old story book to find on the back of a shelf, a laundry chute to make my brother climb down, a vast old attic to explore, an overstuffed old green velvet Victorian chesterfield that it still the base line image of "couch" in the encyclopedia of my mind, walking on the shore retaining wall after dinner to try and catch the green flash at sunset with my cousins, learning to swim in the saltwater pool, drinking ginger ale out of the grown-up glasses at cocktail hour, dressing for dinner and drinking my first cup of coffee out of a demitasse cup on the leather fender in front of the fire in the living room, ping pong, backgammon, the first time I stayed up all night reading and saw the sunrise, Hershey's Kisses out of crystal jar, the rose garden and learning to prune carefully by watching my aunt work around the path on her walker and examine every bush, every stem, walking behind her carrying the basket.  It is Aunt B I miss as well, since she was the one who created the environment, but oh, I loved that house.

5) My grandmother's dark green marble and gilt bathroom with the huge, enormous marble tub. There were sconces. Huge pearls of bath oil. Good Towels one wasn't allowed to touch. Gold pom-pom fringe on...something...a lampshade, maybe. It was the most vulgar room imaginable but when I was 4 I thought it the most beautiful place on earth. I went there first when we visited her, and remain fascinated to this day by the idea of bath soaps that were too good to use, so much so that they got dusty over the years. The toilet roll holder was made in the shape of two gold-colored carp, with their tails screwed to the wall, who arched down to suspend the bar that held the TP in their mouths. It was awful and fabulous and I absolutely adored it. I still like green and gold.

And no Rabbitch, I have not forgotten you.

Oreck, my oreck.

I had a housecleaning experience yesterday that was almost...profound.  Although I like things to be clean, I am not the kind of girl who's crank, generally speaking, is turned by household products.

I mean, I'm not saying I've never bought an organic beeswax furniture polish scented with handpicked lemon verbena from the hands of mute Italian nuns, but I'm not compelled to.  I can get a little worked up about how my table is set, but that is about entertaining, not housework, and anyway I haven't polished the silver in about eleventy-million years and there is cat hair on everything I own, so I think I qualify as non-obsessed.  My grandmother had guest towels and soap that No One was allowed to use because they were 'good' except no one was good enough to touch them, and would fluff the chair cushions if you got up to go to the loo, so I know from crazy in this area.

Ah, the cat.  Bless his furry self, shedding on everything.  Recently he has confined his attentions to the ground floor as the arthritis that is the badge of his 17 1/4 years on this earth make him disinclined to attempt the stairs without strong motivation.  Strong motivation used to mean coming up in the morning to inform me that I was late with breakfast, bitch, but now he waits at the bottom of the stairs when he wants to deliver a message, and often, stays snoozing until the mood to snack takes him. 

Because I am slow on the uptake, I figured out that he couldn't handle the stairs anymore when I realized the litterbox in the family room (downstairs) was staying clean and the cat was using the living room rug instead.  Every day for a week, and even I start to get the message.  And unlike previous experiences of this nature, this one doesn't seem to be motivated by hostility.  You know - you took me to the vet, I shall pee on your laundry.  You went out of town, I shall pee in your suitcase.  You didn't come home until 11 and I'm hungry.  For fresh food from your fair white hands, bitch, not that stuff that's been there since this morning.  Oh, well, OK, if you stir it.  Sorry about the rug by the door, lost my temper.  Can I sit in your lap and purr?  You know I'm really good at it.  I'll put my chin in the crook of your elbow and stare at you.

It is a love/hate relationship.  Which after 17 years is probably inevitable.

And there is already another litterbox on this floor of the house, but it is a) in the next room and b) apparently too high for him to climb into comfortably these days.   As much as I dislike the litterbox in the living room, I dislike a peed upon carpet even more.  And so I moved the box upstairs.  He's using it, but really reluctantly - the carpet is SO much nicer.  He's just getting it broken in.

Yeah, for him.

But in all fairness, the carpet had hit some kind of critical mass of grossness, where the spray-on cleaners available to the homeowner had stopped working and had become part of the problem, building up enough residue in the carpet to trap and hold dirt and odor in their own right, and no longer doing much for the pet stains.  If I were a life form that analyzed data through scent, I doubt I'd be able to stay away either.  And as frustrating as this all is, he's old and his kidneys aren't working all that great and I've had him since I was 19 and he's sweet and affectionate and fluffy and can pretty much get away with whatever he wants.  I might throw a cushion at him when he claws the furniture, but in the end....I adapt myself to him.

And it doesn't make sense to get a new rug - this is a bound remnant, my previous experience with my father's orphaned cat (no longer with us) having taught me the folly of buying a rug one actually cares about the fate of - because, honestly he'll just do it again.

Hey, is this too much information?

But I have to live here and I can't afford to get the rug man in every six weeks.  I used to have a little Bissel carpet cleaner, but it was rubbish.  But some kind of cleaning machine seemed like the only realistic solution, so I browsed around epinions and kept coming back to the Oreck. 

It was a fuck of a lot of wool money.  On the other hand, living room starting to smell a bit.  Money.  Quality of Life.  Money.  Quality of Life.  Ain't that the eternal struggle?

But the helpful folk at epinions mentioned that the machine is sometimes available on QVC, and for clean carpets, I will overcome my home shopping network antipathy, and lo! it is on QVC, and for 45% off the price of the Oreck website. (and 56% off the price the local Oreck store wanted to charge me for the exact same machine.  I called.  The young man was quite rude.  But I guess when he told me the price they wanted and I asked him if he was shitting me, it may have put up his back.  When I said this he said that it included an 8 year warranty.  Umm. 100 bucks OVER msrp, for a warranty?  Call it a service plan and be done with it.  Jerk.)

So it arrived yesterday and I put it together (simple) and I took it home and fired it up.  It has a rinse function, which I used to extract as much of the old cleaning residue as possible before I cleaned.  It took maybe 45 minutes to do about 10 square feet, but this was heavily, heavily soiled and at least half that time was the pre-cleaning extraction.   It did an amazing job.  It was easy.  It stores neatly and is simple to clean.  You can clean tile with it too.

I think I hypnotized myself watching it work - I certainly seemed to have been in a trance.  And now I think I am in love.  I didn't think I could feel this way about an appliance.

Or not about this kind of appliance.

Meet the great and mighty new household god. 

I swear I have wool things to tell you, but I've been stricken with insomnia the last week or so and I am so tired I can't focus.  This rug cleaning thing is the only thing that has been able to break through my haze of exhaustion in days.  Sad, very, very sad.  Says the spinster lady with the cat, the knitting, and the emotional relationship with an appliance.  OK, appliances.

Reflections on a gift of watermelon.

There is a man who runs a junkyard in the neighborhood where my office is.  He is a real, old- fashioned gentleman, of a kind you rarely meet any more, and could be anywhere from 70 to 100.   I'm guessing closer to 100.   His car is immaculate and his trousers crisp, and he wears a cap, which he removes when he enters a building.   You can't use the word spry, no sir, but dignified absolutely.  He grew up in an era with standards and he adheres to them absolutely.   He knew my father.

I see him very infrequently, not since he came by to offer his condolences at the time of my father's death, but I recognized him instantly yesterday, when he stopped by, partly to tell us that he is ill of something they can't define - they know a lot about what it isn't, it seems - and partly to give me a watermelon.

I don't know why.

A friend of his grows them and perhaps he was given one and didn't know what to do with it - it is not a small watermelon, you understand.  Perhaps he was then driving back to work and drove by my office and thought of my father and dying quickly and mortality and family and the end of things and stopped with no plan but to say hello until he found himself asking me if I would accept the watermelon in tribute of my father. 

I am young and strong and lift weights, but here, I am a young lady and young ladies do not carry large and heavy things when men are around.  Fortunately my colleague understands this and carried the watermelon with proper ceremony to my car, a gentleman's surrogate, and placed it carefully on the seat.  I shook the hand of J. the Junkman and thanked him gravely and, I hope, courteously, because there is a ritual to be respected here and because he deserves my respect and because when I felt his hand cool and dry in mine, I knew that he would die soon.

One of the hardest things to learn, after college and 20th century life and women's studies classes, is when it is wrong to make a fuss, when a larger humanity demands that you wait quietly, let someone else act, be female, be still and feel the currents of an interaction, respect the moment.  But I think it just might be one of the most important things I know now.

Tonight I will eat the watermelon - or some of it, because, as I mentioned, it is not small - and I will think about my father and J. the Junkman, and small and ceremonial moments on the journey from cradle to grave and how sometimes giving fruit to the daughter of an old acquaintance may be the right way to face the end of something.

Free to good home.

I don't know how much she's going to admit to y'all, but I was there. 

Ms. Too Much Wool was kind enough to give me house room this weekend, to let me cure my insomnia on her living room couch and sit around and knit shawls and watch the sparrows eat the basil and Alice eat cheese, that very best of things, an indescribably happy and low key afternoon of wool and friendship, beginning, of course, with the traditional fiber hound's show and tell and ceremonial fiber exchange.   I brought this, and look at this, and oooh, can I touch the handspun.  You know.  You've done it too. If you stay in her house long enough, she'll start pulling bags of washed fleece from under a molecule somewhere, and throw them at you, and hand you a basket full of exquisite little balls of combed wool to touch and savor.  The bird will maybe eat a cashew off your knee and all will be right with the world.

We knit shawls and watched a movie and stayed up awful late drinking wine and solving the mysteries of existence, which is the fertilizer of friendship, I think.

This morning, well, a funny thing happened this morning.

You've got two slightly hungover fiber hounds - I've opted for fiber hound as a term of inclusiveness, since we knit, we spin, some of us wash fleece and are irresistibly drawn to books on textiles of the world - well, actually, I guess that probably covers us both - anyway, two fiber hounds on a fine sunny morning in Brooklyn.  What shall we do?

Um.

Um.

Um.

Go look at wool of course.

Come on, what did you expect?

So we hopped in the trusty Official Fiber Festival Vehicle (tm) and headed out to the Yarn Tree in WIlliamsburg.

Have you heard of the Yarn Tree? It is the store where It All Began, the place where Someone learned to spin and where The Great Enabler was born, sending out her spinning influence into the world to force us all to start contemplating a new hobby.  Now, others were involved - influence was definitely exerted by friends in Toronto and Massachusetts.  But the hand that first placed mine on a wheel learned to spin at the Yarn Tree. 

It is a lovely, lovely place and you should all go and see the handspun, the organic merino (was very taken with the organic merino), the naturally dyed silk/wool, and most importantly the boxes full of delicious un spun fibers - the cormo/tussah, the royal cashmere, the yak and camel silk blends, the bags of stinky, unwashed sheepy goodness.  Heaven. 

While we are there, greedily burrowing through fiber - oh, wait, that was just me - L., the owner, starts chatting with Cassie about wool - because we can all talk about wool anytime -  and Cassie explains how really, all this frantic new spinning going on can be traced back to her shop, her classes.   Clearly,  they are old freinds.   Almost offhandedly, L. says oh, I wondered...

Let's go back a bit.   Readers of TMW may recall that a she's been talking about weaving recently, verbalizing the first faint stirrings of a new textile desire.  As soon as I heard that I started making fun, gave her 8 months before she bought a loom,  She kept saying no, no, no room at the inn, I'm only reading.  Yeah.  Uh huh.   In the car on the way over she explained oh-so-seriously that while, of course she wanted to learn to weave, it was just going to have to wait.  I believe I mocked this sensible restraint, if you can imagine such a thing.

So, back in the shop, L. says "Oh, I wondered.  Does your daughter have any interest in weaving?"

Daughter?  Wrong generation.

It turns out that L. has a tabletop loom, a nice one, that she has no need for and with space in her city shop at a premium, she is looking to find it a new home, a happy home with someone who'll appreciate it.

So, Cassie, would you like a loom?

Would she?  Oh, yeah.  Did she?  Oh, yeah.

And coincidentally, there we were in Brooklyn with the Official Fiber Festival Vehicle (tm).  Look how conveniently sized it is...almost exactly...loom sized.

She laughed so hard she had to lean against the table she was sitting next to.  I laughed so hard I had to hang onto the fiber shelves.  It was a perfect moment.  I mean, what can you do when the Universe clearly wants you to start a new hobby?  I think that was made very clear today when a loom fell from the sky and landed right on our Cassie.

We giggled all the way back to her place.

Where it looks right at home, don't you think?

It fell from the sky.  And that is the god's honest truth.

Elementary, my dear.

I had all these notions about what was up next.  I was going to start that green cardigan.  Or swatch something for the handspun.  Or finish one of the nine million ongoing projects.  Read about spinning.  Or work on my severely limited understanding of spin ratios.

That would be a good one, yeah, because when I say severely, I mean that in this area I am such a slow learner I am pretty much, um, special.   Last night I was goofing around with the wheel and it occurred to me that I may have worked WAY harder on the plying that I had to.  In fact, I had the whole ratio thing pretty much ass backward.

I had adjusted the drive band onto the smaller end of the whorl because it seemed like that was helping put more twist in.  Fair enough, but there's a whorl AND a wheel, see?  And the whole thing is about the DIFFERENCE.  If you think about a bike gear, it makes sense, yes?

I knew math would get me in the end.  Or is that physics?

So small whorl, big wheel - for faster speeds.  Not small whorl, small wheel.  No wonder my legs got sore.  If it weren't that this information is clearly stated in the manual -  and on the manufacturer's web site in a section I KNOW I read before I bought - I would feel less stupid.

This all became more clear to me when I drafted up some Romney/mohair, decided that I wouldn't want as much twist on it, moved the bands onto the large grooves of both whorl and wheel....and kept snapping the single as it over twisted instantly and effortlessly.   Now I've got it set on about 4:1 - and actually sort of understand what that means, for sure - which I know is too slow for what I'm working on,  no worries.  It is just an experiment.  I'm going to work my way through each ratio and try to actually use the brain I have to learn something in an organized fashion.

I  notice that now that I'm not trying to do everything in fast motion, the concept of a long draw is become something I can actually believe in.  It is amazing how much more time you have to draft and twist when you aren't racing the fiber.   

I also discovered you can reverse the spinning head on this wheel and put it over on the right side, which works better for my right handedness and should make plying less of an obstacle course.  I had singles running across the room, under the chair and through the grooves of the upended bagel cutter to keep them bent so that I could use my right hand and still have everything lined up with the flyer on the left  (with a delta rather than an orifice, you have to keep your singles pretty straight on.  And is it me, or is the language of the wheel kind of dirty?)

It is amazing what can happen if you aren't too proud to read a manual.   I am trying to apply instinct to a thing of logic, when usually I apply logic to things that ought to be taken on instinct.   Is there a spin doctor in the house?   

So I meant to work on this whole thing - or one of those others if the thinking was too hard.  Swear to god. 

But somehow something completely else happened.   

Any guesses?

792 yards.

More or less.

I started with 8 ounces of this

Colorway Blue Lagoon, angora, silk, merino from The Woolen Rabbit.

Took about 2 weeks, and boy did I learn a lot about spinning.

This stuff is wildly uneven, inconsistently plied, nearly - somehow - balanced, and terribly pretty - for which, I think, Kim is largely responsible.

I couldn't be prouder if I'd made it myself.

Oh, wait....

I love this whole working from the ground up thing.  What a gift, to make something.

A bundle of freshly spun yarn.

A hank of damp, freshly washed and spun yarn.

Near as I can figure, about 792 yards of  something between lace and fingering weight yarn.  It is a little paler than that in real life, but the aqua tone is about right.

What'll I do with it?

Anyone? Thoughts?  Recommendations? Small notions?

I think lace must be involved.

Angels on my shoulders.

I've been letting my nutrition slide for a while.  I used to cook - was really into it for a while and while I am too much recipe dependent, I'm not bad.  I've made a few memorable meals, and I'd gotten to a point where I could start to understand the 'why' of a recipe and change it without causing a disaster.  I had a little crush on Alton Brown.  I took Nigella as my personal savior.

When I embrace a new hobby I am somewhere between the extremes of the dude on a $3000 mountain bike who's never ridden before, and the woman folding the smallest origami crane in the world with typing paper.  I've got knives, man.  And cast iron enamel pans.  And a tangerine Kitchen Aid (that was a gift) 

(But you know I would have gotten it for myself as soon as I knew such a thing existed.  An ORANGE stand mixer?  So on it)

But I bought my plates on sale for a buck each because I knew they'd all get broken.  (I like my plates.  They look like the bastard child of Jadeite and Fiesta ware, but it works.  Cheap is one thing, ugly is quite another....)   

But I was digging the cooking, starting to eat well on a regular basis, improving my skills, improving my knowledge.  I had a couple of dinner parties.  They went well.  Food and fiber aren't that far apart - texture, flavor, color, all the senses get involved.  Even your mistakes can work.

Did I ever tell you all about the time I had a dinner party - great evening - and after everyone went home I corralled all the dishes, washed and loaded the dishwasher and rinsed and stacked everything else for the morning, then I took my B&B into the living room, sat down on the couch to listen to David Gray and finish my drink and reflect on the excellent time....and that was the last I knew until I woke up at 6 am, sitting with my head tipped back and my arm resting on the couch,  still holding my full snifter.    Didn't spill a drop.   
I guess party prep took a little more out of me than I expected.  Or perhaps, just perhaps, mind you, I may have had a little too much to drink.  You may laugh.

Moving on.

Then I rediscovered knitting.  And who wants to spend time chopping when you could be playing with yarn?  Still, I was cooking, I just wasn't expanding my knowledge base anymore.

Then I hurt my wrist.  And gradually I stopped cooking because two of the most painful things I could do were lift pots and pans...and chop, slice and dice.  I didn't decide to stop, you understand, I just realized one day that I had gradually moved away from it and was eating too much junk, too many restaurant meals, too much take out, too many things from packets.

I could not remember the last time I prepared a vegetable.  And I like vegetables.

A week or so ago a I had a Very Bad Day...one of those ones where your friends call and check in on you at intervals to make sure you haven't finished the whiskey completely.  And listen furiously and sympathetically as you snivel and rage and discuss, discuss, discuss it all very, very, very repetitively?  And keep checking in and don't ask any stupid questions about how you are feeling, but just tell you amusing stories until you remember how to laugh?

During this time these two particular very good people kept asking me if I had eaten anything.  And usually the answer was no.  Or toast.  Yesterday.

One of these women made me inventory my pantry.  She was very upset with the result.  Something about taking care of myself.....huh.  I kept meaning to go buy food, honest, but it just always seemed less urgent than the moping.  But the earth inexplicably continued to turn on its axis and eventually the grocery store became a necessity. 

As I was walking through the store, I found myself starting in the vegetable section.  Without conscious thought.  Unusual.

I bought grains, and organic chicken and spinach and broccoli.  Everything in my cart needed preparing.  Coincidentally, both of these friends called me while I was shopping, not to supervise my sad-ass self, but just being friends.  We walked together through the aisles.  And I realized that it didn't matter if they were on the phone or not, I could hear them whispering in my ears. 

'Take care of yourself.'  'Eat something good.'  'Don't forget the garlic.'  'They have Bon Ami at your Whole Foods?'

And then I went home and poached some chicken. Made some wild rice.  A wine sauce.  Steamed some broccoli, sauteed it with a bit of garlic.  Mostly while talking on the phone.  These things I've been avoiding like a Latin exam for so long.  No fuss.  I looked at my plate and remembered that I know how to do this.  It was pretty good.   

I've kept doing it, too.  I mean, it hasn't been but a few days, but even soI've felt better physically this week than I have in a long time.   So thank you two. 

Love the lovely friends.  Today I know how lucky I am.

Abs.

You all are kind to put up with this swatch apologist.  The Knit Goddess told me once that I should come along to her classes so that I can do the bit about why swatching is important.  At this point in her knitting career, she can hardly say the words with a straight face.  But she still thinks you have to learn why you don't find a swatch helpful on your own, because it is really about developing a pool of yarn and fiber knowledge that will let you eyeball certain things.  I can just say it more sincerely.

Of course, now that I've shown you my swatch, that means I have to knit that sweater.  And that will mean that I have to stop spinning.  I am starting to see why Steph says Tuesdays are for Spinning - because if one doesn't limit it to one day, one could lose a whole weekend.  To pick an example at random.

I spun up the last 3 ounces of Kim's bunny/sheep/worm crack Friday and Saturday and started plying.  And plying.  And plying.  I hope to finish tonight, and have some pictures soon.  I think I might have made 1000 yards, which just astonishes me.   Really.  1000 yards.  Of something that looks sort of  like itself.  A bundle, a bushel, a hank and a half...all from 8 little ounces of sea green fluff.

I am a little creaky in my hip joints today, from the treadling and treadling and treadling.  Fortunately I went to the gym tonight and let my trainer create more aches in my upper body to distract me.  Or maybe just balance me out, it feels like.

At one point I was instructed (Julia?  Was that you?) to get a picture of the trainer guy for the blog.   I think one or two others posted photos of their sadistic torturers fitness coaches a while ago and I kept meaning to ask him.

I expected a no. 

But instead he said I couldn't show his face, but I could take a picture of his abs if I wanted.  They're his favorite part.  Well, they're very nice. 

So I did.  Then I felt a bit weird about it.  I mean, it's a little odd, right?  Of course, there's something undeniably perverse about the gym in the first place, the way that weight lifting breaks down the rules of physical distance we usually live with.  Still.

Here's a story for you.

A while ago I arrived for my workout limping.  Because I had done legs the previous session and apparently pulled something in my inner thigh (no sniggering, just save it for later).  I don't usually limp after legs because it is an evenly distributed pain.  If you limp on both sides, you just look ungraceful.  Which passes more or less without notice.

I pass my trainer who wants to know why I'm limping and I snap "because you crippled me." 
So we have to examine my wound which is invisible and identifiable only by the intensely painful sensation when it is touched, so yes, everybody stand around and let us all look at my inner thigh, and the surrounding area.
Gather a crowd, thanks.
He sits me down me on the bench and stretches my leg out to one side and starts digging his fingers into the knot, so I am sitting there with this man between my legs, making involuntary yelping noises as he does something mysterious to my painfully knotted muscles. 
One of the other trainers meets my eyes,  smirks and says, "oh, don't mind us, we're all family here."

It was completely innocent.  Didn't exactly look it.  But it worked, he knows what he's doing.  I could even walk without limping after, but I ended up with fingerprint-like bruises all over the area in question. Which looks bad, if you know what I'm saying.

Maybe it’s the gym itself, all those people working, sweating, just being in their own bodies.  Or maybe once someone has checked your abdominal muscle tone you have a particular kind of intimacy, one you just don’t have with many people.  Maybe it is because the work is both intimate and impersonal, and practical in its goals.  I dunno.

But for the last week he's been asking me if you all liked the photo, so.... okay, here it goes.

He's really not as vain as all that, although of course I told him he was when he asked about the photo.  He's a life long athlete and fitness junky and a denizen of a gym culture that makes the cultural expectations for female thinness we all live with look pretty mild.   Body builders are brutally hard on themselves.  He grew up behind the iron curtain, went to a state sports school, was a gymnast and a boxer, came to the US about 6 or 7 years ago.   He's a terrific trainer, a seriously nice guy, and has helped me change the way I live in my body for the better. 

And he's got the best abs in the gym.

Must ...ply.....now.

Swatch me.

I love the swatch.  I get that lots of people can't be bothered, I know they (the swatches, not the people) lie, and that any gauge one gets will inevitably altered by the action of gravity and terrain against the larger garment pieces.

Don't care.  Still going to make one.  La, la, la - I've got my fingers plugging up my ears against all ye nay sayers.

I love the swatch.  I make a pattern stitch one, and if I am substituting yarns I usually make a stockinette one too, just to see get to know the yarn, it's sag, stretch, drape, bloom and colors.

It is a first date, a nice dinner and some conversation, a get to know you with this new yarn friend.  Will you love each other?  Hate each other?  Will this one be worthy of the ebony needles? 

How does it pull together?  What needle size gives you the zing in your hands that means the texture is right.  Will it fluff out with washing?  Block straight?  How will he look when you take the ball band off and get down to it?  Is he any good...?

Oh, sorry, excuse me......

When you lay it out and go to bed, what will be waiting for you in the morning?  Mr. Right?  Mr. Right Now?  Or a toothbrush and a note?

You decide....

Himalayan recycled silk and wool.  The ball band on this says it 7 stitches to 2 inches, which is totally cracked.   I'm getting closer to 10, and it isn't tightly knit.  See, that's the beauty of the swatch.....first impression was good - I bought it, right? - but the skein was really tightly wound, looked hard and itchy, and much  plainer.   Now, after the swatch, I know this isn't an elastic yarn, but that it is light and comfortable, that it doesn't itch too badly when I tuck the sample under my chin, that it has an occasional thread of gold from the shredded sari silk and in fact is not at all plain or utilitarian despite its first impression.  I know that I could have used 5.5mm or 5.0mm needles, but that I like the 4.5mms better, and there is room to go one size smaller for the pattern stitch.

Pattern stitch, she says?  Why yes.... I have it in mind for this, from the current issue of Cast On:

Now for some math, and I'll be ready to go.