What To Knit When You're Expecting

It has recently hit me that I am getting married in less than two months. This is, granted, still a very long time away, and I'm not exactly having a Wedstravaganza, but the engagement has been since, oh, forever ago it seems, so all of sudden it feels like time has actually passed and we will be getting married at some point which will be fun and then honeymoon which will be more fun and woohoo!

My mother, unlike me, and thankfully, has not been in a state of delusion that everything will all just come together on its own, and so she has done a ton of work already for which I am very grateful. But yesterday I freaked out and was talking to everyone I knew (including office interns, who were very helpful in doing the math in figuring out how many drinks per hour per person) and going over what I had done and what I had not done and what was left to be done and gahgahgahgahgah....and came to the conclusion that there was basically nothing I could do.

Sure, I can make a few calls, get the rehearsal dinner set to rights, confirm confirm confirm, and buy slippers for Dave and Toaster and RockNoodle. But the stuff that really needs to be done--like setting up chairs and tables, and laying out shells for the aisle 'o shells, and making the sangria, and getting my legs waxed--I can't do any of that now.

So. I am coping with the stress of not being able to be proactive by playing a lot of Diablo II. I am regressing.

I should knit. Knitting would be better. But El Long-Named Tunic is now kind of boring and shedding a whole lot of gross-looking yarn fuzz all over my desk. And it's not wedding-related. I want to knit some Perditas out of my leftover Laminaria yarn for RockNoodle and my sister Hannah (who are bridesmaids). But that requires sitting down and stringing beads and frankly I don't have the patience.

The week after we got engaged I ordered Wedding Knits, but have not yet successfully knit anything from it. There are many things that I'd like to knit, and I've tried twice, but the Bridesmaid Wrap looked plain terrible, and the Belted Tunic Dress' gauge was horrifically off and I have not yet had the courage to pick it back up. Plus it looks like one long and boring knit.

But I really ought to make something. That would be a knitting gesture toward wedding, right? (Laminaria clearly didn't quite cover it).

I'm going to try the shorts and tank pajama set. Yep yep.

I dyed the yarn:

I made Rhubarb again. And I don't think I used the same colors I did the last time I made Rhubarb. (This time I used two packets of strawberry/kiwi, one packet of strawberry, one packet of grape, and half a packet of tropical punch). I think Rhubarb might be an easy color to achieve, Kool-Aid-wise. Still, I like it. I love semi-solids, and I think this will look sweet as a shorts/tank set.

And hopefully it will quell some of the "The sky is falling because I can't set up chairs!" angst.

We did not have the kids this weekend, so it was very knitting-productive.

Well, really I finished Cherry last weekend, but didn't post about it for the following reasons:
1. Unpredictable weather patterns over the last few weeks made finding a moment to get a good photo in a little challenging. (And actually, it's raining in the photo below.)
2. Finishing it took So. Freaking. Long that I needed a short break from the thing to recover and regain any interest.

I have now done so. Interest regained.

I am, as has been stated before, not the world's greatest finisher. As such, my Cherry doesn't look quite as good as other people's--I don't love the way my button band ribbing pulls up and the bottom there, and my buttons are never ever evenly spaced. But--it is supremely comfortable (set in sleeves often don't set quite right on my shoulders, but these do), it's elegant, and very wearable. I wear most of my knits to work and people admire them but they also look sort of askance. What's that strange clownish sweater she is wearing?, I imagine them asking. Here I have no such concerns. I'd wear Cherry to a meeting with a client. Even a client that doesn't knit.

Dave could theoretically wear his British Sea Power socks to work. You know, not in the summer.
Let us hope he chooses to wear them with pants.

The self-striping yarn striped successfully. Admittedly, the pattern is a little boring, but I wanted them to just be stripey. And you can't really see in this shot, but there are tiny birds peppered here and there. BSP has some fake bird or other at every one of their shows. It seemed fitting.

RockNoodle really wanted to make a hat out of her sock yarn, so we figured on something lacey and double-stranded. That doesn't make for much knitting that she can do on her own, but it will produce a FO that she can wear and be proud of.

It's a little hard to tell, but that's Foliage. RockNoodle's Kool Aid choices don't really look much like any leaves I've ever seen, but they're very her, and I think it'll be an attractive, if less-than-leafy hat.

I was sensible and cast on socks with my Kool Aid dyed sock yarn. I actually can't even tell you what colors this is made of--it was my first attempt at dyeing and I just tossed in a bunch and left it to simmer in the pot. I wish now that I had written down what I used, since it's a lovely semi-solid. Rhubarb, Dave and I decided.

Early on in my knitting life, I came across Baudelaire and fell madly in love. But I was terrified. Toe up? I'd never even knit socks! How on earth do you do gusset-shaping from the toe up? And lace? And lace + cables? Forget it. I was not worthy of this pattern.

And there was something about the color--if I was going to attempt Baudelaire, I needed to find the absolute perfect yarn, or it would be a complete waste. For a while there, I was considering Sweet Georgia's Slayer, but she discontinued it. And nothing else seemed exactly right...

Somehow, the mysterious rhubarb-colored Kool Aid works. And the pattern is--easy. Granted, I'm somewhat further along in my knitting skills, and using a cable needle no longer makes me tremble in fear, but this is tv-knitting,.

Still. I'm knitting Baudelaire. Go me.

When Dave came to wake me up this morning (this time from a mildly unpleasant dream. He has earned back some points. Not enough), he told me that Toaster had an upsetting dream.

Toaster dreamed that he was dying, and that he was saying his goodbyes to all the people he loved. He told his mother that he loved her so very much. He told Dave that he was the best father any boy could have had. He told me and Regina's partner John that his life could not have been happier with us in it. He told his sister that she could visit him any time in her thoughts.

Gah. Makes me all teary even now--I can't imagine what it must have been like for him.

But it was hilarious when I came up the stairs and the normally very-affectionate- but-very-grouchy-in-the-morning Toaster rushed up to give me a hug, and to make me breakfast. He poured my Cheerios, he cleaned up any that spilled, and then he went off to entertain his sleepy sister. If I hadn't known about his dream, I might have been compelled to ask "Who are you and what have you done with my stepson?"

I cast on Crisp Rectangle Tunic Top, from Fitted Knits. I've broken the Fitted Knits seal. From now on, it's going to be all knits that are fitted. Plus some socks.

That's probably not true. After all, once the cold weather comes again, I'll be back at my Kim Hargreaves, not to mention Dave's Annual Christmas Sweater. But after the twelve hours of finishing that was Cherry (more on that some other time), I could do with some raglans.


The yarn is Knitpicks Cotlin, which I'm pretty psyched about. It's not as soft as the other cotton blends I've knit with recently, but the drape is fantastic, and really, shouldn't this tunic be in linen? Seriously. I'm confident it'll soften up with the multiple washings.

I'm finding knitting the purl rows at random a little intimidating, as I really like the way it looks in the photo and want it to look exactly like that, but it's fun. The pattern itself, so far, is a little mindless, so figuring out the placement of the purl bits gives me something to do.

HOWEVER. I had heard that Fitted Knits has a fair amount of errata, so fine. I was prepared for that. But the short rows as described in this pattern are not at all intuitive. It's fine, once I realized that what I was doing wasn't making any sense, I checked various message boards and it was explained to me that the short rows exist between the actual rows, but do not count as rows themselves. This was confusing.

I'm not thrown off Fitted Knits, not by any means. I'm just doubly prepared to doublecheck things that don't make sense.

ANYWAY.

So I was hanging with Eddie Izzard at his fantastic house (lots of light wood paneling, mysterious stairs and hallways and porches) and he was being all funny and then he pulled open all these secret drawers filled with--wait for it--yarn. And was about to share his secret for dyeing yarns with halos of a different color than the underlying strand (think The Fibre Company's Terra), when all of a sudden....Dave woke me up.

Eddie Izzard. And yarn. And secrets to dyeing. In one dream.

Dave's in the doghouse.

I have a long history of dorkdom. The Firefly obsession may be only a few years old, but it was preceded by many years of obsessing about things that are Cool Only To A Select Few. (For example: Dave was laughing at me just last night as I burst into a medley of Supremes songs. I don't much care for The Supremes, but there was a period of about two months in the early nineties when I really, really did and I learned all their songs. All of them. And now I have all these song lyrics in my head, though I do not like them.)

When I was 15, I went through an E.M. Forster period. I dressed as though I lived in Edwardian England (which let me tell you, made me so popular. Couldn't find time for all my millions of friends), watched every Merchant/Ivory ever made, blushed and rewatched The Scene in A Room With a View (you know The Scene), and bought a poster. This poster:

I taped it up in my room, across the way from my poster of The English Patient (mmmm....) and contemplated living in a Villa and smelling roses and having heavy locks of red hair.

I've now relegated the poster to a corner of the downstairs hallway (where it is cheaply framed, not taped), and I no longer dress like Helena Bonham Carter. Mostly.

So clearly that bit of belly showing there would scandalize Charlotte Bartlett, but there is something about this top that speaks to me not of a band with far too many drums, but of the quiet drama and gentle tragedy that so entranced me as an overly emotional teenager.

Oh, let's not kid ourselves. I'm still her, and I'm occasionally still entranced.

In any case, I love this top. I loved knitting it, I love the yarn (gaugetastic! Hooray!) I love that I can and will wear it everywhere and to all things and not feel self-conscious in it. It looks made with love, but doesn't absolutely scream homemade. Lack of sewing required (in my case, anyway) makes for a more professional-looking garment.

And I can give a little wave to the version of myself that had the guts and the romanticism to love what I loved.

Toaster and RockNoodle have been fascinated by my dyeing forays, and of course wanted to try a little handpainting themselves.

It's a hard thing to want to do with energetic kids in the summer (stay home as opposed to going to the beach? stay indoors?), but Saturday was raining, and worse yet--RockNoodle has strep. Again. She's a little strep-factory.

So home we were staying. And indoors as well, since it was periodically monsooning.

Dyeing is just such a production. You soak the yarn, you ready the dyes (well, we were using koolaid, so that didn't really take much effort. But, you know, it used up a lot of little bowls), you prepare the workspace (ha! Yeah. There isn't enough plastic in the world. If somebody tipped over a bowl of koolaid, there would be staining. Nothing to be done about that. Except constantly repeat "slowly now. Careful. Don't spill. Yep, that's good--now be gentle!")

On the other hand, it takes up a whole lot of time. Toaster went first, and had a bit of a challenge picking manly-colored koolaid:

It's like a sunset in the Southwest, I think. Totally badass.


RockNoodle had less of a theme--she just went with what sounded pretty:

Toaster is concerned that her skein is too much like the Enchanted skein she's getting socks made out of for her birthday, but frankly--this girl? There cannot be too much pink in her life.

The finished products look pretty good, I have to say.






Toaster's all set for socks--he wants to try magic loop, so I've got a pair of 40-inch size 2 needles on order for him (I fear that if he goes any smaller, we will never have a finished pair, even with my help).

RockNoodle wants to make a hat. I'm thinking Foliage, and double-stranding the yarn. Possibly going down a couple of needle sizes. We'll see.

In any case, they are both winding up a storm. That's another two hours of activity milked from the dyeing. And then there's the knitting. Awesome.

On a rainy Father's Day that we wanted to spend doing anything but cleaning, Dave and I elected to go to the movies. In retrospect, we would've had more fun scrubbing toilets with toothbrushes. Without gloves.

We arrived very early, hoping to get in a photo shoot of Laminaria before the movie started (right near the parking lot of the movie theater is a golf course, and the owners built a gorgeous walkway, with river and grassy dunes and bridges. And views of the cranes and warehouses of New Jersey. You tend to walk kind of sideways), but the aforesaid rain made that impossible. We asked the Ticket Taker Guy what time they'd be opening the doors for a 4:10 movie.

"Uhhh, it takes them about ten minutes to clean up, so I'd say 4:20."

"No, no--the movie starts at 4:10. So what time would the doors open from after the previous showing?"

He shuffles around some papers. "The movie starts at 4:10. I get it. So yeah, they'll open the doors at 4:20."

Pause.

"Okay, thanks very much for your help."

Our afternoon, if you can believe it, got even less intelligent from that point on.

The 4:10 movie was The Happening. Don't see it. I not only want my money back, I want my time, and my brain cells back.

I like M. Night Shyamalan. I liked The Sixth Sense and Signs. I didn't think The Village was that bad.

This is terrible. The acting? Terrible. Across the board. Even the little kid was terrible. The plot? There is none. Character development? Please. And scariness? Nope. No scariness to be found. I covered my eyes a lot because Ick, I don't want to see somebody running themself over with a tractor. But trees waving in the wind? Not. Scary.

We did take our walk along the golf course after the movie, though we spent most of it marveling at the movie. God. Bad movie.

I'm trying to move on, but you have to bear with me.

In the meantime, here is Laminaria:
















(The cranes and warehouses are well-hidden across the river.)

I like it, but I'm still unsure. Perhaps it's because I used size 4 needles instead of size 5 (I didn't want a giant Laminaria) but it doesn't look as big and flowing as others. Maybe I'm just not an aggressive enough blocker?

I do feel that the colors hide the pattern. But I do like them. And I like the weight of the shawl (or lack thereof) a great deal.