Enchanting Juno

If it's pretty it MUST be mine.

I mentioned,  I think, that I had two Shetland fleeces that were lost in transit?

The post office is slow, but faithful.  They arrived.  I looooooove them.

Meet Freedom....

And Demitasse.....

Both Shetland sheep, first shearing for both.  Freedom was a black lamb who changed to this marvelous silver as he matured.  Demitasse is, as you can see, fawn with blond streaks.  So pretty, so soft, so very lovely.    Somebody hook me up with the proper Shetland names for these coat types?

You will of course, be seeing many, many, many more pictures when I can unroll them in sunlight.  Many.

But for now, I washed up a lock or two of each.  How could I wait?

I can hardly bear to wait.  But for the sake of discipline, I must finish washing the three bags of the white fleece I sorted this weekend.  It's nice, you know, quite nice.  But not as nice as this.  I am as faithful as a flea.

I really like colored fleeces.   The chocolate and silver and honey,  all those shades and riches of tone and texture to touch and wash and card and spin....pardon me, I'm getting a little warm.

Gladys has some new friends.  And I have to go wash the drool off my chin.

But we have a new development Chez Enchanting.  Someone has discovered wool.

Could be trouble.

Weekend at a glance

I really need to get out more.

I realized this weekend that I was perfectly happy to stay in, see no one, read, knit, wash fleece, shop for groceries, groom the cat, talk on the phone.....

It is a rich full life, but I recall, dimly, that I used to go out and wear lipstick and see the occasional movie.  I'd like to think I have such a fabulous interior life that I am complete as I am, but in fact I might be turning into a bit of a recluse.

Note to self - do something about that.

Photo review of recluse's life:

   

Ripped.  I haven't quit on the pattern per se, but these two yarns don't work together.  Witness the other side - and remember this is supposed to be reversible.   I think we can all agree that it is better not to go forward.

Still Life with caffeine and chocolate.  And yet I wonder about the insomnia.

Three bags of sorted Shetland, ready for washing.  The most productive use of TV time I can imagine.  Much better than the program in most cases.  I also washed some Romney and a few sinks full of rambouillet.  And sorted the already washed balance of this Shetland fleece into storage.  I need to get on it - I've got two Shetland fleeces lost in the mail (I haven't given up yet) and a CVM lamb fleece on the way, and 5 pounds of rambouillet and 2 and a half of Shetland backlogged in the kitchen.
I have a whole thing where at each stage I go through and lay the locks out straight and shake out as much crap as possible.  The best bit is holding the whole fleece - or as much of it as possible - and shaking and shaking and shaking and seeing all the  bits of chaff and second cuts rain down  - like beating a rug.

Baby hat.  I'm a little unsure about the size.  So I bought a giant grapefruit.   But I can't tell - Does it need to be a bit deeper?

She'd be cuter if she weren't chasing the camera cord tail and sinking her claws into my abs in the process.   She does it with the knitting, too.  I look like the loser of a fight with a cactus.

I feel stagnant - stiff in the brain, unlimber of spirit.  I need something that shakes up my world.

I said that aloud, didn't I?

Now I'm going to pay.

But first I have to go put the laundry in the dryer.

Listen to the planets.

Before I move on to the actual post I would like to thank my lovely, lovely friends for informing me that admitting to tiny yarn livestock is akin to admitting to suffering from a shameful disease.  Like an embarrassing boil, or social infection.

So yes, I have yarn herpes simplex B (for beetle).

Yes, you are all very clever.  But you know and I know that the heartbreak of yarn herpes is way more common than people like to admit and that 90% of the population will be exposed in their lifetime, despite reasonable precautions......Remember, it is the secrecy that harms, not the disease.

With treatment, one can go on to live a full and meaningful life.

Moving on.

I don't believe in the star stuff.  I am Logical.  I am Rational.  I'm a WASP for fuck's sake - even if I don't want to be.  Except maybe I've gotten a little superstitious about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things and maybe I have a bit of a new, therapy- induced openness to non-linear explanation. 

But don't tell anyone, okay? 

This is the CrazyAuntPurl March horoscope.  I am hopelessly addicted to them.

ARIES (March 21- April 19)
Reading tea leaves may be a dying art, but I am well-versed at discerning truth and prophecy from the smudges on the top of your Diet Coke can. It was, in fact, the only way I could properly find a reading for you this month. Seems you have some planetary re-alignment, and all that other crap that astrologers talk about. What that means for real people is that you're in a shitload of flux, and you can't make heads or tails of this crazy cycle of change. I wish there was an astrological safe house where you could go to wait out your forecast, but the best I can offer you is a glimpse at the future -- the knowledge that next month the influx of change will continue, but you'll finally begin to see the right decisions you've made. And there are plenty! Until it becomes clear, though, do NOT make ironclad long-term life decisions out of sheer desire to make the flux end. I mean really.

I'm not going into the details....but let us just say she nailed it.  The woman is clearly psychic.

The only trouble I have is knowing what is an ironclad long term life decision - because who knows what little thing will change your life?   What sweep of a butterfly's wing, what going back for the cellphone, what casual remark is the Moment?

So between now and April first - if you need me , I'll be under than rock over there with some yarn.  Not making firm decisions.

Wool tour.

Two weekends ago the lovely and delightful Village Knittiot joined me at Chez Enchanting in order to illuminate for me again that the Internet wants me to  have a rich and happy personal life.  Or maybe she came to spin.

Same thing, really.

We did that thing that we (and by we I mean Our People,  And by Our People, I mean Wool People)  do - the wool tour?  Into every drawer and box and bag of fiber for the oohing and the aahing?  I love that.

And at the bottom of the wool closet is the pièce de résistance, the Big Box of Alice Starmore.  OK, that sounds like I've got something gruesome in the closet, and it is the exact opposite.  Or it was until a week ago.  You know what I'm talking about - my birthday indulgence of last year.  And the Village Knittiot  dove right in, as would we all, to see the colors and texture right up close and personal.

Over by the window, in the natural light, in she went.  But in the middle of admiration, of swimming in color, she said the words that strike the fear, the words of horror and loathing - "there's a hole in this skein."

I can't figure out how to put in the scary movie music.  Just imagine it.

I re-bagged everything we'd been looking at - with particular attention to the zip locks, I assure you.  Then we took the BBOAS up to the kitchen for a post mortem exam.  A closer look found the carcass of one beetle in the bottom of the box, and two skeins with holes. 

The yarn is in quarantine. With the vodka.
Isn't that what everyone has in their freezer?

And the box was banished, flung out the back door.  I waited until too late in the day to take this picture - so visualize a soggy cardboard box under the arrow.

It makes sense actually, because last summer Cheryl and Mamacate both had infestations of various wool munching crawly things and I freaked out and bought the Greatest Stash Bags in the world (TM) and bagged up the closet of stash by yarn.  But the Starmore, in its own little box, on the floor of the closet, the Starmore (of course the Starmore),  I overlooked.  And down on the floor in its cardboard box it was the first rest stop for bugs entering the house from the common wall, a delicious buffet with no security, Starbucks and a Cinnebon on the thruway.

Dolt.

But only two skeins, only one visible bug carcass...it could be worse.

Which brings me to the second part of this tale.  Which I like to call "Koigu, stupidity and me."

The blue neck scarf thing I started a few months ago - it's about 1/2 done.  I save it for moments I need something small and repetitive.   I wound up a skein of Koigu for this shortly after I bought the yarn - 8 month ago? - and then it sat in the basket of yarn-for-small-projects by the couch.

(Doesn't everyone have a basket of yarn-for-small-projects?  A pretty Lantern Moon one, with no more than 3 balls of anything in it?)

About 2/3 of the way through that first ball, the  yarn that passed through my hands looked  frayed.  Odd, but not remarkable.  Then a few yards later, the same thing.   Then again.  The first one I spliced, but when it became apparent that there was a problem, I went through, broke off the bits that were short and damaged, spliced the good end in and kept going.  I've had these little yarn bundles floating around the knitting bag since then.  Never really have it a thought, perhaps assumed that living in the bottom of the knitting bag, the ball had a close encounter with some scissors or a needle.  No biggy.

A few days after the Starmore incident I sat up on the couch with a resounding "oh fuck"  (I'm slow, but I get there).  And dumped out the small project yarn basket to find one more gnawed skein of Koigu...the horror, oh the horror.  Left unchecked to munch, to consume, by my own blindness.

Skein by skein I examined it all and found no other visible damage....until way down in the bottom of the basket there is a ball of Wool-ease with some obvious signs of wildlife. 

The Wool-ease went out with the trash, and each of the small project lots has been bag sequestered.  As have each of the projects and their attended balls of  yarn in the as yet still pink cubes of undone things.

I know that plastic bags are not the best environment for wool.  I really do.  But the alternative doesn't offer much comfort either.

But the bugs are not the biggest pain in the ass here these days.  The biggest pain in the ass is this:

She has the world's largest collection of small toy mice, enough to please any small domestic predator.   Where does she like to play with them?  In my bed.  While I'm sleeping.  It's a cat and mouse rodeo.  On my head.  At 1 am.

She's sleeping by my leg right now.  So innocent with the purring and the big green eyes.

Fuzzy little troll. 

I like it like that.

So this weekend was a knitting weekend.

Saturday I went with my friend J. to the yarn store.  J has been knitting scarves for the last few months and we decided that she was ready for something else.  Also, I had to look at the Rowan wool-cotton colors in person.  It was a matter of some urgency.

She went home with some Noro Big Kureyon - because friends don't let friends go home with out yarn that makes them that happy - some Addi Turbos and Ann Budd's sweater pattern book.  And I made her swatch.  And measure.  And plan.  Which earned me the name Knitting Nazi for not just letting her jump right in. 

"Dude," I told her, "you can do what you want...as long as you're prepared to rip and reknit because you were too impatient to lay the foundation.   No bitching."  I'm  mean that way.

Then I taught her to purl. 

We watched Gladiator while this was going on and all I could think is that modern TV isn't all that far from the Colosseum.  Are we doomed?

In between the movie and realizing that maybe I should have explained about bringing the yarn to the front in order to purl in rib, I worked on the final rows of the back of Lucy - I spoke poorly last week, the sweater isn't nearly done, just the back, and it is about to be temporarily abandoned for a couple new things because I am fickle, people, fickle, I tell you.

So enjoy the progress while I'm showing it, that's what I'm  saying.

Pretty, yes?  I'm a little worried about the armscyes.  But I need more sweater before I can really tell.   I'm going to roll with it.  If I gots to reknit, I gots to reknit. 

Casting on is instant gratification.  Knitting is the long haul.

Yesterday I drove to Loop in Philly (great store) with the Knit Goddess and D from my knitting group and met up with the Village Knittiot for a class with Annie Modesitt - she was teaching the funky circularly knit shrug that was on the cover of Vogue a few months ago.  It was a terrific class - Annie's a very good teacher, the pattern is fascinating and I learned a lot.  What could be better than a day spent learning about knitting, talking about knitting, meeting knitters and knitting? 

Naturally I bought yarn.  Big Kureyon, because the previous day's exposure made me WEAK.    And some Cash Iroha for contrast.  I love Cash Iroha.

Noro is tricky.

Example one is a sample started on slightly too big needles (and by too big, I mean the recommended size, Noro so totally overestimated these things) and right from the end of the ball.

Pretty ugly.  No, staggeringly ugly.  Disheartening.

Now, image a period of time in which there was  worrying about having wasted my money and also about maybe having no talent as a knitter whatsoever.

Second attempt, down 2 needle sizes, selecting an interesting point on the Noro color spectrum and also carrying along a bit of the Cash Iroha for color in the cast on.  Much better.

I'm calling it the dubious-but-hopeful shrug.  In that it's a gorgeous sweater, but I am dubious about being able to wear it.  But hopeful enough to try.

Small miracles.

My apologies to you, my darlings, for my very, very absent self.  It has been A Week in Which I Do Not Cope with many things.

I hope I am snapping out of it and can and will rejoin you soon.  And oh! such treasures as I have for you.  A workshop!  A dating story dating back to December! A rant political!  Carpet beetles!

Last night I sat in front of the Daily Show knitting away on the back of the beautiful but interminable Lucy in The Sky cardigan.  As is my recent wont, I moaned to myself, "Why, why, oh why does it never get any bigger?  Why, why, why does it never end?"  And then I looked down and realized that the ball of yarn was done, that I was attempting to knit the last cable row in the repeat for the second time...and that I only had four rows to go before it was finished.

I was actually a bit bewildered.  Probably by having my whine cut out from under me. 

Of course, I only knit 1/2 of one of those four rows.  I didn't want the abrupt ending to be too big a shock to the system.

Tasty sheepy goodness.

A conversation, circa Nov 2005.

S: Here, try this Shetland.

J: No, I hate Shetland.

S: Appalled silence.

J: It itches.  I had these Shetland sweaters when I was a kid that drove me mad.

S: Oh, yeah - you don't hate Shetland.

J: Yes I do.

S: No, you hate cheap Shetland. Try this.

J: I do not like Sh...oh my god what is this?

S: Shetland.

J: It's so good.

S: I know.

This is how madness begins.

Somehow I came to acquire several Shetland fleeces last week.  It could happen to anyone, right?

It was a hot, happening, fabulous, swinging Friday night Chez Juno. 
Trying out different fleece washing methods. 

Several firsts - in the rear, my first hand combed fiber.  In the front, my very first genuine, no fooling, lace weight yarn.   Something has happened to my spinning in the last month, some sort of quantum leap.
Maybe it is the Shetland?
Still so far from perfect, but so beautiful. 
Love is blind, but happy.

I want to thank you all for your comments and emails last week.  I didn't really know what I expected when I wrote my last post, but the shared stories you were all kind enough to send and post made a tough week a little less difficult, the world a bit smaller.   More than that, it reminded me that the experiences we all have are human - that even when we feel most alone we are part of something universal.

Coupling.

I bought myself a little green glass frog ornament with a little gold crown as a sort of joke, sort of symbol this year.  He amuses me.  The whole of the past five years seems like it has been a coming to terms with my expectations for myself.  Specifically, realizing that who I was raised to be and who I am are very different people and my automatic assumptions about what one does are not always an accurate reflection of what I actually want. or desire. or would thrive in the doing of.

I dunno.  I'm single and nearly 37.  And mostly I'm ok with that.   (Particularly on days when my neighbor J walked by with his one-year-old daughter and we made happy grownup noises about how big she's getting and snickering jokes about how we ourselves are not aging AT ALL, no sir.  Which he followed up by turning around as he walked away and said, you really aren't aging, you know? Lovely man.  Unexpected complements are the best.) 

But in December I looked at the living room on Christmas morning and felt a little peculiar.  My stocking was the lightest because I'm not married.  There's no spouse or child to fill it up.   It didn't bother me - or I think it didn't bother me - but I did notice.  And I'm not complaining that I didn't get enough stuff - because despite my fiber acquisition habits and the impression they may have created, I'm not really all about the stuff.  It is just a marker of something, something that in the past might have felt like a badge of failure and shame.  Now, I don't know what it is.  But I was aware of it.

I'm lucky - I have wonderful friends who allow me as much wallowing time as I need and kick my ass with the truth when I need that too.  In those deep hours of the night when I wake in the dark from a  silence so loud it hurts my chest and penetrates my sleep, I have people I can call.

Walking in this world uncoupled can feel very minimizing.   My mother talks about this a lot - as a divorced woman in her 60s I think she feels is more than I do, with a sharper edge that comes from being in a marriage-required generation or from having once been a part of a married pair.  My generation has a lot more room for singles in middle age - which, let's face it, is where I'm heading damn soon - but there are still those moments when you realize that there isn't anyone buying a gift out of their special appreciation of your individual fabulous weirdness, that so far, you haven't been just right for anyone, moments when that feels like a prophesy or measure of your worth - or both.  Those are bad days.

She says that it is a married world and if you are a single woman you just have to adjust yourself  to life on the sidelines.   But I don't think that's wholly true - you can only truly be marginalized if you yourself believe that you are less when you are alone.   If you ask for what you need, lots of times you'll get it - this year I was tired of being the guest in other people's homes and so I said I wanted everyone to come to me for Christmas.  And they did. 

I was at an event recently - a coupley event - and I caught myself looking around at the  tables of couples thinking really?  Are those my only choices?  There were exceptions - three I can think of - all married to college friends, oddly - but mostly they were just these...guys.   I think I used to be afraid to acknowledge my preferences or standards or whatever - thought I had to say yes to anyone who asked me out because what if he was the last one.

I left all the choice in their hands.  Its a terrible way to live and resulted in few successful relationships because how can you be a date, much less a partner, of a woman who is afraid to make her own choices?.  Even if she knows her own mind, if  she can't acknowledge it, can't say this is for me, or not, how can that work?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this - if anywhere.  It is just what I've been thinking about.

The tiniest sweater in all the land.

So I was (gently) mocking a friend the other day for failure to launch on a very fine gauge project.

She very properly told me to fuck off, she hadn't been able to get gauge on 0000 needles, and that was that.

Because I mock with love, I start thinking maybe I could get her some 00000 s.  Where have I seen those?  So I called Too Much Wool, my girl with dpn knowledge as wide and deep as the sea.

During this conversation, a  memory stirred.

A disturbing memory. 

That would be a sleeveless turtleneck sweater in a wool/rayon blend....knit on 0000 needles.  It is 45 stitches wide, maybe 12 or 13 stitches to the inch.   I can't believe I could even FIND it.

All along I've been saying I hadn't knit since high school when I picked it up again 2 years ago seriously.  And that is true...but for this one odd little aberration in 2000, when I stumbled across a website selling fashion doll sweater kits and decided to give it a try.

I sat in the incredibly bad light of my mother's living room one weekend and out of the depths of my insanity I made this little thing.  Which is now my oldest unfinished object.  I'm not a well woman.

Of course when I look at it now, I don't see the crazy....I see that the knitting is shitty.   I have decided to cut myself some slack - in theory - because if the first thing you knit after a 14 year break from the sport is 12 stitches to the inch, on 0000 needles, knit in bad light, well.....what can you inspect?

TMW is disturbed that I knew enough about this to summon the Great God Google to me and come up with the site in 2 seconds.  She wants nothing to do with such foolishness.

But I keep sending her pictures.

I think I might have started to wear her down with this:

There are tiny matching Fair Isle socks.  I swear to god.

See it all and Much Much More at www.scottymaloney.com.

I need hardly tell you that I've already ordered a tiny Norwegian sweater kit, do I?  It would totally make sense to have my first two color knitting be scaled for an 18 inch doll, right?

Oh, yes, they do stock 00000 needles.....that was the question, right?