Enchanting Juno

le clapotis, etc.

Did you know that le clapotis is a French nudist resort?   If you Google it, the English language site has a scenic view, but the french language site has a french lady with a navel ring on and not much else.  That's your cultural differences in a naked nutshell.  This amuses me.

I am afraid I haven't got the talent or energy to write an ode to my scarf, but it is very beautiful.  I am afraid I shan't do it justice, but I have a fake Persian lamb jacket that will look very well with it.

View 1:                                                                                                    

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View 4:

I see I forgot to weave in an end, there.  Oops.

In the end, I do like this pattern very much.  And I will make another when the next batch of Lion and Lamb comes in, but I think I will make it both one repeat wider, and another longer - I think I should just be able to squeeze that out of the 4 skeins.

As for the rest of my sense of purposeful finishing, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak - my wrist has been killing me.   I think I'm going to have to suck it up and have the surgery.  It was actually getting a bit better (I briefly had actual, if slight, movement while performing a finklestein, but right now I can't even tuck my thumb inside my fist), but while performing the incredibly difficult task of tearing a receipt off the printer at the grocery store a shooting pain manifested itself, and now it is all fucked up again.  But slowly, row by row, this is taking shape.

This would be the front of Truffle Darling, which I would like to finish before it is 70 degrees outside.

salmagundi.

Where is everybody?  Traffic was way down yesterday and both yesterday and today it feels like many fewer posts popping up on bloglines.  (And Enchanting Juno isn't showing up as updated at all, even though it has been.  Did the same thing yesterday.  Grr.) It is possible I'm just confused because I got used to wading through the 611 posts waiting for me when I got back from Arizona, but come on people, don't you know I have procrastinating to do?

We are supposed to get snow, big snow, starting this afternoon (Reports vary re: ETA) which is particularly great as I have a meeting at 5 PM, but that, my friends, is the very reason I have four wheel drive.  I got my Jeep about 3 years ago after a near death experience on 3 millimeters of snow in my old car.  When I realized that I was buying a house and would be living alone, with no one to notice if I slammed into a ditch and didn't make it home, I knew I had to have four wheel drive before the next winter.  And then, improbably, I fell hopelessly in love with what was then the new model Jeep Liberty, which I still think is funny looking but I adore.  I only test drove it to be thorough, but true love is true love and should be respected. 

It is orange - pardon me, salsa - which translates as deep metallic tomato soup colored. I have fuzzy dice.  And then my brother bought a house in Vermont.  On a mountain.  With a class four (read: dirt.  If I've got the classification wrong, let me know, 'kay?) road.  So it turns out that if I want to visit him during the 8 months a year that they have snow or axle deep mud I need the jeep anyway.  And I kinda have to because the other four months he's in Ontario.  And when everyone else on my historic (narrow, inaccessible, last in the city to be plowed) street is stuck, I drive on.  So everything works out.

I have to say that, as much as I love IK, this issue doesn't exactly rock my world. Spring and summer issues are iffy, I know that the challenge of finding knitting projects for warmer months is significant, but I don't know....I did like the brioche pullover, although I had a little bit of symbol shock when I looked at the 11 million pages of brioche instructions (symbol shock is what happened to me when I took pre-calculus.  My brain became an impervious surface and that was the end of my relationship, such as it was, with mathematics), but it is pretty and shapely.

I think it needs fold up cuffs though, tailored ones in the contrast color.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that my favorite thing was the ad supplement from Tahki/Stacy Charles. That corset pullover is my favorite knitting pattern ever. It took my breath away the first time I saw it, and now I have a .pdf of it saved.  Thanks IK.  I actually have a boatload of the original yarn in olive tucked away for when I feel like my skills are up to the necessary modifications - 'cause it would have to be a bit longer.  We do not show our belly button.  We are 35.  Of course, none of my trousers are that low, either.

Notice how I am cleverly distracting you with other people's pictures to conceal the lack of content of my own.  I did finish Clapotis last night and when it is dry I shall show you.  The pattern lists blocking as optional, but since it was only 13 inches wide, and all the dropped stitches had a bend in them, I went for it.  The Lion and Lamb did bleed significantly in water, so I am hoping the color wasn't badly effected.

I started to pin it out flat and then realized I didn't want it to be aggressively straightened, since the appeal of the pattern is in its ripples, so I just flopped it out roughly to shape and left it.  Looks like it will be about 21 inches by about 67 inches - that's the four extra repeats, which I am glad I did.  It could have been too short for me other wise.  I only have about half of the Fourth skein left, maybe less, so I think I would not have made it it with only three, even knitting as written.  Allow 50 extra yards, I think.

I also seem to have lost my T-pins, which is a shame.  How do you lose a tomato pin-cushion bristling like a stainless steel porcupine?  It isn't like it could fall behind a couch pillow, I'd have found it with my ass by now.

Carnage.

As I get older I find I want and need more time to myself than some consider natural.  It isn't that I don't like other people -well, I like some of them.  But my own company is necessary.  Which is a highfalutin, psychological sounding way of saying that this was the laziest weekend on record, and I loved it, particularly the part where I stayed in my bathrobe half of Sunday and puttered and nursed a hangover, finally emerging Monday when I ran out of diet coke and was forced to shower and put on some clothes before crawling out into the world, blinking, in search of my carbonated elixir of life, my crack, my fizzy Elysium.  Then I scurried back.

Refreshed by all this, Monday afternoon I was infused with a spirit of destruction and decided to take my two most abject sweater failures and reduce them to dust.  This is certainly inspired by the activities over at the Blue Blog, but I want to be clear than I'm not joining anything official, OK?  I just wanted to deconstruct something. 

Rhinebeck Red started Monday as it has started every day since the fall - mostly assembled, ends hanging, mocking me for my foolishness in making something so bulky and yet close fitting. 

Now it looks like this

It is still one of the most beautiful yarns I've seen, although extremely hard to photograph.  It enchants me.  Now I have to finds some way to make it up that doesn't make me want to throw myself on a sharp object when I look in the mirror whilst wearing it. 

The other is this - Klaralund.  The exact opposite sweater in many respects - shapeless, loose, way too big, and deeply unflattering even when pinned to better dimensions.

This did not go as well.  Silk Garden does not wish to be picked out of the seams.

AT ALL.

I was so, so, so very careful, but managed to cut the sweater in two places on the last seam.  And then I tried to pull it out. 

I tried one end.  I tried the other end.  I looked at the pattern to make sure I was at the right place.  I tried again.   I turned it over.  I tried the other end again.  I went to one of the cut spots and tried to start it from where I had sort of created a new end. 

Fuggetaboutit.

I never even got one row undone.  It is bound to itself in some alchemical way I cannot comprehend.

After a while I threw it on the kitchen floor.

That's where it still is.

I don't like this yarn.  I love the colors, yes, but I hate the yarn.  The stripes leave me cold, the rough texture revolts me, I couldn't stand the weight of the fabric it made.   It is to me anathema.  And a fine reminder that you should always listen to your original instincts, particularly when they say "ick".   I talked myself into it - almost became obsessed by it - because I liked the way the sweater looked on someone else.  Someone, by the way, built nothing like me.  Come to think of it, it was Alison at the Blue Blog.  Apparently she has some strange power over me. 

You know what I really want to do?  Put it in the trash.  It is going to stay on the kitchen floor until I make up my mind.  Or the cat pees on it.  Which is another way to make up my mind.  Of course I still have five skeins of it even if I do throw this away.  I expect that this will be a yarn that follows me, haunts me, for the rest of my life.

Then I went to knitting group where my spirit was refreshed and I began the Clapotis decrease rows.  I believe I might have mentioned before that this group is full of fabulous women.  I laughed so hard my throat burned raw.  And I totally dig the way you get to drop TWO sections per repeat decreasing Clapotis.  It makes sense.  I should really have read ahead, because I can tell you I spent a lot of time staring at this trying to visualize how the end shaping was going to work, and man, I could not see it.

Miss me?

Hello, my babies. 

One thing I know now is that where ever I end up in the world, there must be mountains.
The Southwest  is nice, but it doesn't speak to me the way it does to so many.  But mountains - ah, the mountains draw me.  Everytime I left the house I stopped dead in my tracks.  Mockery was perhaps made of me for this, but that's what little brothers are for.

But this is the view outside my mom's front door. 

Not bad, huh?

And it wasn't so bad, really, the family visiting thing.  This time, for the first time I felt like I couldn't be drawn in to the sickness.  Not that I was apart, but the oddness that characterizes my mom was hers, not mine.  I didn't feel that urgency to convince her of my view point, to change her.  I could mostly just tolerate it, and when she trespassed in ways that upset me, I just said "I don't like that" and left it alone. 
I think that might be growth.  Huh.

And I got to know my nephew a little bit.  He's a cutie,  a little reserved with people other than mum and dad yet, but so sweet and serious. 

I'm afraid his favorite person in  the family is my mom's cat, who comes supplied with a fuffy tail, good for pulling.

We went to the zoo and saw this facinating fellow.

And giraffes, and the world's largest rodent and peacocks and a couple of wicked,  lazy, menacing panthers and looked at butterflies, and a desert style cottage garden and saw cousins, and played dominoes and backgammon, and drank margaritas in the back yard and threw lots and lots and lots of pebbles in the pond. 

And when family was a little too much with me, I worked on Clapotis.  I've finished the 13 straight repeats.  The jury is still out for me on this one.   I like it....hmm okay...but I liked it more when it was just the pointy little increase end - at this point is seems a little frayed and wrinkly looking.  Dunno.
I need to make a decision about whether to make it a couple repeats longer, or start the  decreases.  I'm afraid it might be too short for me.

Any thoughts?

 

A superbowl story in pictures.

I just can't take another joke about the clap, the clapper, etc.   But .....

Friday night: It was after midnight and I'd spent the evening working ONE row on the Redhead (3 times. I was misreading the increase stitches.  Let us not speak of it), mostly just to get it switched on to a shorter circular needle (I had it on a 40" and it was driving me crazy), and playing with the MP3 player and learning how to use my camera, since I need to take pictures of my nephew this week. (I am very parenthetical today).

Around one I looked at the Lorna's Laces all wound up on the coffee table ready for the plane, and thought, eh, sleep is for sissies.  And so cast on.

Then I remembered I had to meet my trainer at 9:30 AM.  So I stopped with 9 stitches on the needle.  And took a picture for you.

Saturday I was hanging out at the house of my friend non-knitting H and I thought - a new pattern in a house full of sugar cranked toddlers?  Great idea.  And picked it up.  Did a couple of repeats.

When I got home I ripped it out (sugar cranked toddlers not being helpful companions to knitting) and started again - even though it was 10:30 PM.  I was instantly addicted and forced myself to put down the first 4 pattern (maybe 5?) repeats at 2:45 AM. 

It will not surprise you to learn that I slept until nearly 12, although it did surprise me, as I've only recently started to get over four years of insomnia.  I make no never mind about staying up half the night, because I am so used to being tired I don't count it and in the past would probably have been awake again by 8 anyway.

But I'm learning how to rest again, and when it takes me, it takes me down.  Noon.  I can't remember the last time I slept straight through to noon.   Since most of Sunday was already shot, I gave up the idea of productive work at this point and went for a walk with a neighbor's new puppy, and re-categorized music on my computer (It makes me crazy when the downloaded data for an album is misspelled or mislabeled, and it happens a lot.  So I have to fix it on my hard rive.  Otherwise it will download onto the MP3 player wrong.  And piss me off every time I scroll through) and knit a row or two.  Didn't take a shower until 4:30.

Then I went to a Superbowl party.  Since I don't give a rat's ass about football, I did this:

And after I got home, of course I had to finish the last section 2 repeat.  And the first section 3 repeat  and drop the first column (and take pictures.  And save them to Typepad.  So I could show you today.) before I went to bed at 2 (!).

Gratuitous yarn close ups - these are the only pictures that really show a hint of the lavender tones in this yarn.

Lion & Lamb = ridiculously, sinfully soft.   The thought of paying for a sweater made out of this makes me feel a little faint, but then again, so does the thought of wearing it.   I'm hoping to have a little left over so I can make wristlets.  How sick is that?  I have a fourth skein "just in case" but I should be hoping I don't need it so I can save myself the ridiculous sum of money it cost.  But I'm not.

Caroline : package on the way today. 

Other contest participants:  I'm leaving for a week tomorrow and I am afraid I shan't be able to have the consolation drawing until I get back.  You will not be forgotten.

You may not (or may) hear much from me for a while as I don't know how much computer time will be available to me in the House of Mom.                              

Think of me with Sympathy until I get back, a broken shell of my former self, in need of massive psychotherapy to recover from the 8 days in my mum's house.