Enchanting Juno

I been bad.

Very, very bad. 

Me home, bored, full of painkillers and with a mostly empty credit card at my disposal turns out to be a volatile combination.

Act surprised.

Please.

So you remember how I was all torn up with unrequited love of Aran Knitting?

Well, some lady saw my bid on eBay and emailed me.  Offered to sell me hers for the amount of my last bid - well below average price.   And oh, by the way, was I interested in Charts for Colour Knitting, too.

So I'm thinking about it - it is a risk, she's unknown to me, blah, blah, blah.

Monday I've got a head full of sedation and I'm all, "Hell, life's a risk" ...and push that paypal button.  Sometimes it pays off.

One tiny crease on the cover of AK - which she told me about.  Otherwise perfect condition, both of them.  I'm way more excited about these than I ought to be.  Way.

(And yes, I did read through a copy of AK before I did this, to make sure I wanted it.  For the charts alone I wanted it.....the chart book was more of a flier, but I didn't think I'd have trouble selling it if I didn't like it.   Like that was going to happen.  Yeah.)

You know what AS says in the Charts intro?

That some "can gain pleasure from a pattern, just as if it were a well-turned phrase in a novel or poem." 
I thought it was just me.

And did I show you this?  Of necessity on a break, but this is the first piece of knitting I've done where I look at it and go, "yeah, baby"

Cables and me, we are clearly meant to be.  And since the Knit Goddess rescheduled the design class I can take it.

Really things are going awfully well right now, little nice stuff all adding up.  I better go break a glass or something.

We learn.

A big shout out to Stephanie Pearl McPhee, without whom I would not yet be aware that my roof was leaking.

Seriously.

If this hadn't come in the mail today, I would not have been lying on my bed to hear the steady drip-drip-drip, or been still and quiet (except for the giggling) long enough to realize that it was coming from the wall, not outside the window.   During daylight hours, which allowed me to investigate.  I would have been at the gym, or cooking dinner, or watching tv, or going on the much needed Diet Coke run this house is crying out for. 

See?

Yes, I have no trim on my wall right now.  Wanna make something of it? If you recall, this was a bookcase until November, and I ain't gotten around to going to the Home Depot yet, OK?  And a good thing too, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to see the little puddle seeping down from the attic.

I will happily take credit for my own speed and dexterity with the ladder - I was up on that roof in about 3 minutes flat, a far cry from the timid new homeowner of 3 1/2 years ago.  No clogged gutters....means a real leak, not standing water seeping....into the attic....ah ha!  Ridgepole! Bastard.    I put basins under all the drips, marked the wet spots and the next fine Saturday I'll be up there with the tar and paper.  Better that than a new roof.

So thanks Harlot, and I mean that most sincerely.

Other learning stuff, and the original topic of this post:

I started The Redhead, the beautiful auburn Mariah, with a sleeve.  I suppose if I were clever I'd have done the boring bits first, but I wanted to learn how to cable properly - it is one thing to make a single cable, or horseshoe, or whatever up the center of things, instantly memorable and quite simple, and quite another to start to integrate woven cables, and single cables and ribs and things.  Since the sleeve is only the width of a sleeve, I thought it a good place to start. 

If I got freaked out I could just call it a swatch.  And if it was successful, I didn't have to start over on the real thing.

It was giving me fits.  I could process one part, or another, but none together.  Eventually I made an excel file that laid out the increases and cable twists, so I would have a place from which to orient myself.

And it went a little better.  The Knit Goddess explained why the cables have purls in them and I started to see it a bit, realized I was depending too heavily on the chart key and forced myself to not look - to at least try the pattern first.  And slowly, I started to kind of get it.  Last knit-night I did 10 rows with having to stop and rest my head.  And at the end I looked at it and said, "Hey, this doesn't look like shit anymore." 

But I was still saving it to work on only at knit class, when I had support to hand.  The rest of the time it just lurked in the bottom of my bag and mocked me.

Last night I was hanging out with my friend non-knitting H and I realized I needed another ball to divide for the neck on Nameless (back done but for the shoulder shaping).  Which I did not have with me.  So I pulled out the Redhead.

And in a house with 2 other adults in the middle of unpacking from a move, with three children, two of whom are little and noisy, while watching Terminator 3 and carrying on mockery of said film, I knit upon the Sleeve and it was Good.  In fact, I finished the first full pattern repeat.

I did have to pull out two rows when I got home because I repeated two pattern rows unnecessarily - the Post It, she moved.  But the important thing is that I am pretty much off the chart key - meaning I can look at the pattern and sort of see which way it needs to go - and I looked at it and Knew I had made a mistake.  And fixed it, nae bother. 

This is, and I realize I condemn myself to total geek hood by saying so, almost as good as an A from a tough professor.  I learned something.  I have integrated the knowledge.  I can apply it.

Cool.

Doesn't even matter if this first sleeve ends up far less beautiful than its future sister, I'll be as proud of it as my first woodworking project (1st grade), changing my first tire, or the A- from that evil genius of Shakespeare.

This is.....deeply satisfying.

Because really, there is nothing better than knowing that Your Powers are Growing.

An odd, nay elusive, sense of triumph.

So, as you know, I cast on my accidental Redhead.  Totally grooving on it, although I think the beginning of the sleeve is the easy bit.  But last night I'm knitting along in the chiropractor's office and I discovered two things.

1) When I have just finished working out, my hands shake so much that my, um, skillz (oh great goddess, I said 'skillz'.  Help me.) go right out the window and thus I found myself working as awkwardly and laboriously as a beginner, even though what I worked out was my legs, not my upper body. 

2)  I made the fourth cable twist the wrong way, which is a major bummer because I am now on row 16 and the wrong turn took place in row 3.

No, no, it is an opportunity.   

But I don't think the chiropractor's office with shaky hands is the right place to explore this opportunity, so I bite the bullet, drop the whole thing down (People, people, don't be sad, it is only a four stitch cable) and coincidentally, get called to the table and have to put it away.

Adjusted, home, showered, fed, I pick it up, find another 4.5 mm needle and start knitting it back up again.  This whole process is a bit like love, in that you have to have faith and just let go, trust in the outcome even while it looks like chaos and crap.

(Hmm.  Useful lesson of the day.  Note to self:  apply to other areas.)

And I get to the top and it looks even and good and not like chaos and crap, which is a nice little success, maybe foretelling success in other areas requiring faith and letting go.  I feel pleased with myself and put down the knitting to go play with my new MP3 player.

(Did I tell you I got a new MP3 player? I have to go visit my mom next week and this is my reward: something to listen to on the plane.  The beauty of the MP3 player I don't think I appreciated before.  I have a little flash player for the gym which has survived many a flying trip from the back of the cross trainer across the room and plays about 40 songs.  It is terrific, although it has started making a funny noise occasionally, but this, this has EVERYTHING.  I found myself wandering the house later with my headphones on, listen in the dark before I fell asleep.  It was exactly like being an adolescent except with a mortgage and it is me who has to clean up the hairballs).

A little later (while the new song database is updating) I take a look at the Redhead and...not so much.

I clearly lost count somewhere and made one of my cable backs a row too soon.  So the bottom one is  a little squinched up, and the top one is a little elongated.  It showed a lot more in person than in the photo.

Oh well.

Guess I'll be having another opportunity for spiritual practice tonight.  Who doesn't need that?

This is the best color representation so far.  I do notice that the left cable is notably fatter than the right one, so that's something to look out for.  I'm not going to sweat it though, becasue this is going to be under my wrist, and well, perfection is SO boring.

Gilda

So I accidentally cast on for Mariah last night. It was an accident, I swear.

I got this new yarn, see? Jo Sharp DK in Tawny. Which turns out to be the exact shade of auburn I always, always wanted my hair to be. Lovely, irresistible yarn. Lovely irresistible color.

So I found myself swatching. Just a small one.

But I got gauge for Mariah first try. So I printed out the pattern.

And I found myself casting on a row, just one. And another. And another. And before I knew it, it was 1:30 AM and I had an inch of cabled ribbing in my hands. It could happen to anyone.

Look at me tramping around with new yarn so enthusiastically that I didn’t even stop to think about my infidelity to Truffle, Darling or…what was that other project, anyway?

I christen this sweater “The Redhead” in honor of the many hours I spent hanging over a sink trying to achieve this very color, and in honor of the developing ideas about how image might change identity that characterized this period of adolescence. 

And if that makes you think of Rita Hayworth, well, I can live with that.