stitch marker

the many starts

So many things begun and not finished, and no sense of closure for me or for you. I imagine you must wonder, sometimes, about that...thing...I started a month or two ago that you never saw again. Or maybe that's pure vanity and you've forgotten everything no sooner than you surfed away. Most likely.

While I run I imagine I will blog captivatingly about it. About how my knitting charm on my bracelet is always bumping my hand. I keep sliding it back toward my wrist and like a Brazil nut it keeps rising to the top and bothering me. The knitting just keeps pecking at my hand, peck, peck, peck.

I miss my dog, and her bony yet soft head. I ran a 5K the other day called the Doggie Dash, and I had so hoped she'd make it to that run. There were a lot of dogs there, confused and lunging at one another at the crowded start line. What are we doing here?!!! Then we started running and it was even worse! But we soon evened out and the dogs calmed down. I wondered, as I passed people (mostly walkers or the infirm) whether I could count their dogs as a roadkill too.*

I'm knitting several things right now. Mostly Sebastian's other sock and the February Lady Sweater in some gorgeous orange yarn that Martin finds unspeakably ugly. Thank you, Pam, this pattern is making me so happy.

I have about 10 other projects sitting, and I guess you may be able to tell I'm both completely blase about them and would like passionately for them to be finished. I think it might be good to rip out everything I'm not really going to finalize. Start fresh. I hadn't thought of that until just now. I could have all my needles back! My room is a mess again, and that doesn't help my inspiration. I need help from an organized friend who will sit here and make me clean.

And finally, working on a book idea and pulling all that together. Wondering if it's absolutely stunning or totally stupid. And wondering what I'm going to do to survive the adorable but mind numbing "why"s. Why is this our house? Why does the earth turn to night? Why is the car locked. Our favorite so far was to Martin:

Why do you have that face?


* Note: Roadkill is Hood to Coast language for passing another runner. Teams put hash marks on their vans for how many other runners they pass.

good morning sunshine

Wow.

That's all I can write about  Clara's review of our book over at Knitter's Review. I am awed to see our work written up on her pages, and could not have imaged a more thoughtful or positive critique.

Just when things get so tough and unrelenting and...noisy...that you think you need to go for a month to a special ranch, all of sudden a whole bunch of people are nice all in a row and it makes you feel good to be alive.

First, Martin very suddenly sent me for a night at the Grand Lodge.  A lovely, lonely getaway that I could reach by TriMet bus and luxuriate in for a mere $50 for my queen room, so it was guilt free. We've been there a few times before, primarily for the fabulous soaking pool and frisbee golf course. Except, don't go there, because it was so nice being in that pool alone. ;-) Right above my head, in a fir tree that was intermixed with a blooming magnolia, two birds were making a nest. Hot tub plus nesting was super relaxing.

Then on the way home I found out about Clara's review when our book went to #1 in knitting on amazon.com! And I needed a ride to Tigard for the Tigard Knitting Guild meeting and was escorted totally happily by my friend's husband. Andres was a star, carrying crates of books, moving heavy tables, charming the ladies, and even commenting thoughtfully on all the show-and-tell finished objects.

The Tigard meeting was lovely, and I just hope I did not bore them to tears. There were about 50 people there - a very well organized and well attended guild. And they bring snacks! We did a flower technique together, from the Eden Scarf, and I think a few people really liked it.

Now for a little home cooking and cleaning. Our own little nest needs some mending. It's sort of out of hand. Yesterday Martin edited the toy box (hero!) and today I think I will get the kitchen completely good for a moment, before it starts going downhill again.

Maybe I'll even make wiggly noodles. (Super simple recipe here.)

where's my cheese? do i get cheese now?

• Ellie is in remission!
• Sebastian had to get 3 stitches in his forehead this morning!
• Later today, not only did he poop in the potty for the very first time!
• But also he did it while watching The Osmonds for the very first time!
• And besides all that
• and working
• and food shopping
• and visiting with the neighbors for a while
• I even knitted a couple rows on my spicy v-neck tee in the lovely blue Eco+ Wool.

Those people who say they can't find time to knit? They just don't need it bad enough.

1, 2, 3

Home is so much nicer than that crazy party picture. Work today, work tomorrow, but at least it is from home. There was actually snow falling outside for the last 20 minutes.

recycling

Y'know how sometimes you think things are settlted, and are going to be one way? And then you spend the night in the ER with an IV full of Atavan? Exactly! I had four seizures last night between 5 pm and 9 pm, after having had none for over two months. It's even more alarming, somehow, when the medicine has been working and suddenly it doesn't and no one knows why. (The doctor implied that my 3-week-plus cold may have something to do with this but didn't really say so. It would be nice to have an explanation. Yeah, for everything in life, right?)

It was sad because Sebastian and I were having the nicest day. We sat at Tandem and he played with a TON of kids while I knit a square for mason dixon's afghan. (I met several knitting mommies I'd never known before. Nice.) Then we had incredible bus luck, a nice walk home collecting leaves and rocks and berries, and he got into bed and (gasp) took a nap. It was like a fairy tale of a mommy and little boy having a nice morning.

I had time to work on my recycled stuff for the SCRAP holiday bazaar on December 8. Sarah and I got in! It was a juried process to select vendors, and we'd been in last year. As I recall it was a really fun bazaar, but Sarah was pregnant, sick, and couldn't eat any of the sandwiches and treats from pix. This year she'll have Monroe in a sling and I'm sure she'll be eating plenty.

I'm determined to not upset myself and make everything last minute. So here are my first items. Gauntlets. $15? $20? Here's another view. And the front. I also started several hats out of that same sweater, and a pair of pulse warmers. It feels so industrious and pure to get five projects out of one cast-off sweater I found in the bins. It'll feel even better if someone pays me for them at SCRAP so I'll have extra Christmas money. ;-)

Anyhow, I got started on these projects, then Sebastian woke up and we loaded up the buggy to go to the playground. On the way there I found myself lying on the floor of the woods, looking up at pretty trees, with Ellie and Sebastian strapped in and just sort of waiting silently for me. I called Martin and my mom to come meet me at the park, and while walking home I had another seizure, this time on pavement so my head hurts. A third at home in bed, and fourth at the hospital round out my special Tuesday night. I didn't even get to put Sebastian to bed. He was already sleeping when I got home. It made me feel, for the nth time, like an invalid. A mommy who's always in bed or at the hospital or on the floor. I know that's not true, but I hope he doesn't remember me as always sleeping. :(

I guess, overall I am doing a lot better with this than I was a few months ago. But as I feel I'm living with it, it comes back again to do something, like poke me in the ribs and say "Not so fast, lady, I'm still here." Well...so am I.

the boys partied for gg's birthday

And we had baked potato bar, and hats, and cake! (That would be chocolate cake with wet walnut filling and mocha buttercream, as per the birthday girl's request.)

Happy Birthday, Mom.

p.s. Somewhat embarrassingly, Sarah and I both wore our ravelry beta t-shirts.

the automatic house

Last night I had a plan. I was going to sit in bed with my tea and my bright little bedlamp and knit my socks until I finished them, just in time for the August deadline in the Sock a Month knitalong. I had about half a sock to go, but I figured I'd make it like Lightning McQueen, sticking my tongue out to cross the finish line just in time.

Martin found me upright in bed with the lamp on, socks in hand, sleeping.

So these are going to be my September socks. I have about 30 rows to go.

The yarn is Zen String Serendipity yarn in the Blueberry Pie colorway, and it's fat and luscious to knit with. I'm using size 2 needles and 56 stitches, and I made up a rib and cable pattern. I want to finish a bunch of things today, but I'll settle for these socks, and maybe the booties, which are darn close too.

After getting that head start on sleeping last night, I woke to crying at 3:30 am. It was one of the nights (few, thankfully) when Sebastian is inconsolable and for no apparent reason. I took him into our bed and he kicked me to sleep and finally fell asleep himself. This morning I woke up to the sounds of people already up in the living room. Martin said he got up and found Sebastian reading by himself in our big green chair. He noted that Ellie had also jumped out the window to let herself out. It was like a Ray Bradbury automatic house. And we slept right through it.

we interrupt this progress to take a picture of this progress

It's been an odd week, but in some ways so rewarding. (I guess there's no need to be mysterious. I'm taking some new medication for seizures. I hadn't had any in years and they suddenly came back.)

One thing that's been unexpectedly nice is that I can't drive. So I've spent quite a bit of my time at home, and at our local park with Sebastian. Going to "the brown park" (he calls it that; it's wooded and wood-chipped and the play structure is brown and green), has meant walking and running every day, and has been really joyful for the little man. He seems to understand that we'll go there a lot now, so he's less desperate when it's time to leave. And he's really coming up with a system for exploring the whole playground in order each time. We have some little rituals now. On the see-saws he has to "turn them on" by pressing what he calls the buttons, but which are the bolts that hold them together. He's funny. It's nice.

I've had time to appreciate the view from my cushion, and I pruned and weeded our side yard for a wonderful BBQ last night, with new friends and old friends. I love to see new friends and old friends talking to each other and laughing. Sarah and Jonathan were here with their three boys! Jonathan took over the grill, which was perfect. I made some good brown jasmine rice with butter and honey and garam masala, and Alicia made a delicious buttermilk pound cake with strawberries and whipped cream on it. Sebastian sat on my lap in the gathering dark and ate whipped cream and berries from a huge bowl.

My mom talked about an old movie that was one of our absolute favorites when I was a child. It's one of those things that's a vivid snapshot from my early years, and it immediately conjures up feelings of wonder, home, safety, love, everything I associate with being a kid and nothing the movie is actually about. When movies we liked came on TV, like all the holiday movies, Mom would make special food to go with each one and make a huge to-do about them. This movie - while not a holiday one - involves pancakes. A witch who makes intense blueberry pancakes that make everyone happy. Have you seen it? Alicia remembered it too and we had a wonderful moment realizing that anyone else in the universe had ever loved this obscure little movie.

I also felt warm enough to own up to the group that I'm a member of the Laura Ingalls Wilder club, and Martin and Andy made handmade coffee that came out delicious, always a good sign that it's been a lovely evening.

The other day I had so much time at home I actually pulled out my Gibson Girl sweater from 2004. I had no idea how to work this kind of lace when I started this sweater, but it intimidates me a lot less now. I did 10 rows, then decided to work another 10 sometime soon. No pressure. It was intended for fall 2004, then fall 2005 seemed like a good idea because my body would small enough again (aka not pregnant) to wear it and I worked on it alot right before Sebastian was born, then fall 2006 seemed nice...Maybe fall 2007 is my lucky year for this project?

a few lovely things

It's summer here. Really, truly summer, hot, people walking past to the park all day, dogs nosing around, kids off school, popsicles, watermelon, summer. For some reason we'd gotten rid of our living room curtains and were baking away every afternoon, miserably cooking in the glare, unable to see our post-nap TV screen (yes, we watch Kipper for a few minutes after nap, during the incredibly looooooong slow waking process).

Summer feels easy. I am an anxious person, always trying too hard at everything, making everything harder than it needs to be. In second grade, the teacher gave us a long word and asked us to make as many smaller words as we could out of it. I made four words out of it, total, without repeating any letters. Of course, she meant to make one small word then start over, make another small word start over. This is how I tend to do things, the hard way, and then I'm horrified when I have only 4 small words when everyone else has like 50.

I've always felt like I'm a newbie at this. I'm a new soul, and I don't know how to do anything. Inadequately oriented.

Summer doesn't make me feel this way. I feel like I know how to do it. It's nice.

Anyway, I meant for this post to be about a few lovely things. Not at all the same scale as one another, but here they are in one list:

• Monroe's birth (story and pictures)
• the curtain fabric I got at the bins
• Sebastian's symbolic squirrel curtain and play kitchen underway
• little baby pants
• this lily pad game; I really want to make these!
• root beer floats (thanks to Katie for the idea)
• running together with the whole family in the park (we get such admiring looks!)
• the dream of going to the movies, though we don't really

5:15, after a nap break

I cleaned my room today. It was bad.

At 1:30 it began like this. And this.

Around 2:15 I continued for the millionth time to ponder the gravitational anomaly in my craft room. Every time - really every single time - I reach for yarn up on my shelves, several skeins fall onto the floor. No matter what I touch, it and all items around it fall to the floor. It makes me seethe. And I get so angry I just leave it the f*** down there, and then we get to where we were earlier today.

At 3:00 we began to detect said floor.

At 4:00 I was trying to figure out how to get all the fallen yarn (yes, this is just what had fallen on the floor since last time I cleaned up) back into this 5-foot-square craft room.

The answer is this: There will be some free yarn on my driveway tomorrow morning, around 9. Not everything that fell, but a good box of your garden variety free yarn. Not acrylic either, people. And I'll be sitting in my room happily pondering my seven or so WIPs that I unearthed and what new thing I should start instead.

summer night moments

Thursday night we went out to throw a party for Sarah (left) and her impending baby. A bunch of us are making a knitalong blanket out of strips of Louet Gems, and I gathered the pieces that were finished. One from Olivia. One from Hau (she's there on the right). One from Susan, almost off her needles when I took this picture.

I've been having summer longing these days. Big changes in weather seem to make me ravenous for the opposite, and they intensify my feelings. Make me feel time passing so acutely. The heat and activity followed by the luxurious cool night air is doing this to me these past two weeks.

I wish for the millionth time in my life to have a camera in my head that is more reliable than my memory. But then realize for the same number-eth of times that I don't want that. I want the imperfect memories, glazed with a heat shimmer and dusted with a summer night cold.

I have a snapshot in my mind of a night at the very tail end of last summer when I had just set up my new craft room. I had the door cracked open and was working late, and a neighbor walked by and yelled hello. Another. Then a third neighbor came up on our yard, over to the window, handed a beer in and asked what I was up to. A perfect bow-tied-on-a-box, honest to God ice-cream-man moment of summer.

When I think of these past moments I'm filled up with - not happiness - but a sense of coziness and cheer. But when the moments are actually happening I get terribly lonesome and sad. I see them happening, then think we're all going to die. I think I'm having nostalgia in advance.

Thursday night was a quickly organized party for Sarah, who is either going to have a baby any minute or bear the name Chicken Little forevermore. She arrived in an adorable outfit with her enormous pregnancy looking very different than it had just a day ago.

We ate delicious chutneys and rice studded with black cumin seeds, a beet salad with roasted chickpeas that crunched and then disappeared in the mouth, and a cold blend of white wines. After dinner it wasn't enough time out having fun and knitting, so Sarah and I went alone to pix for dessert. She had a chocolate thing made of chocolate logs, I had a strawberry and liqueur soaked cake topped with Italian meringue. We were fancy people. We stayed out late. Like 10 o'clock. Cars were cruising by with radios on, the air hung heavy even at that hour.

Sarah forgot her camera, so I pulled around the corner on a particular block of Clinton Street where there's always someone skateboarding, bicycling, playing guitar on a porch. The fun block. We got back to pix and she ran in to get the camera. As she walked out, clicking on her probably last-time-this-pregnancy high heels, she raised her arm in the dark to make out her watch and hit the "split" button to start timing a contraction. I sat alone in the dark car and longed for the moment even as it passed.

before

And after.

Martin was sitting inside our new granny apartment a couple weeks ago, hidden behind the kitchen counter. As I've mentioned before, when spring arrives in Portland our street is like the boardwalk. We're one block from an incredible woodland park and so hundreds of people walk by every day. They are pretty funny, when they're not stealing anything.

On this particular day Martin happened to hear from behind the counter, a person tell another person, "Can you believe that cool house? They made it out of that SHITTY garage!" Making sure to impress on the second person, because clearly they could not really understand, just How. Shitty. our garage was before. Which is really not true. It was old, but an ultra cool garage with a built in workbench (which is now in our bedroom) and a built-in oil-changing pit.

Never mind. It's all coming together now. We can almost, if we squint hard, see the end of this horribly hard time.

farming the fantasy

The photo shoot has come and gone through my home and my family like a sweet summer storm. It was so wonderfully serious and funny and ironic and strange. The photographer could not have been more perfect.

One night after shooting we found ourselves at a bar talking about fantasy. (As Michael joked at one point about intimacy, "I've been to a lot of knitalongs, and it always gets like this." I imagine photo shoots also always get that way. End up with nights in bars talking about fantasy). Anyway, fantasy in fashion and in knitting books. My feeling is that there's a fashion fantasy aspect to most knitting books, but that also (and sometimes more so) there's a knitting fantasy, which includes time to knit, a cozy place to knit, perfectly luscious FOs, beautiful materials.

Martin and I were discussing this later, and he said that we knitting bloggers are the farmers of that fantasy. We tend it, grow it, swap seeds.

The photo shoot was exactly that. We were farming the fantasy. Behind the scenes was ridiculous, dirty, messy, A-clamps holding scarves to shirts just so, models gazing lovingly at piles of dog crap in the park. All the fertilizer remained just outside the frame, and all the farmers were wonderful and the pictures are pure magic. I wish I could share them all with you right now. But we wait for this particular crop to come in next spring.

oh little house

I'm so sorry you're all torn up for the holidays.

I love your wood, and your bones, and your coldness in the morning, and the way your heat kicks on like a volcano from below, your sweet little rooms and your cozy fireplace. I love how you've carried us through the past 8 years and how we never want to leave. And that's why we're doing this now, so that we don't have to leave even though our family is so much bigger and you are so sweetly small. We promise we'll replace your pretty rounded front stoop and put back all your plants, and your little animals will come around again and sniff and buzz at you.

We'll get there, house. We will.

ramblings on a dream house

We used to have this horribly mediocre noodle restaurant on our street called Noodlin'. I guess kids really loved it, and my neighbor's six-year-old son once said with a weary, dreamy resignation because it would never come true, "I wish Noodlin' was our house."

I could relate. When I was his age I dreamed of living at the boardwalk, and wished that all my friends and all the people I'd ever known would walk by outside my door every night.  

But even though it's no longer on the boardwalk at the shore, I still share his intensely wistful dream of the perfect house.  For me it's a cozy place of soft edges and warm colors and abundant stuff, but not messy, where there are children and adults and people coming and going and yet it's not too loud and everything's pretty and there's soft lovely music and curtains moving in the breeze and the colors are oh so indicative of my creativity and yet a neutral and lovely backdrop for the happy chaos of life. As Jane Siberry might sing it, it's "full of babies, and dogs and food and wine." But in a way that doesn't make me so wretchedly tired.

On my blog I show the golden moments when  the dream and the real touch, the little overlapping circles of that picture in my head and my real house. The kitchen booth when it's not covered in peanut butter, the fire crackling in the hearth without any plastic toys melting in it, knitted work on a sunny windowsill without a cat puking on it. You might think I live in the prettiest place, and I really do.

But it's often a mess. And I was just thinking about this because I've been longing for a clean, cozy, perfect house for fall and despairing it would never happen.

And then the dream and the real touched again, in one of those fleeting moments that makes my heart tumble. The other night Sebastian was sitting heavy and tired in my lap and we watched the sun go down outside and the red roses light up with the last rays of sidelong dusk light. I sang Rockabye Baby to him and he drifted almost to sleep and sat heavily breathing and watching the yard do nothing.

And I realized that the people I wanted most in my life are here with me, my beautiful family. I dreamed of a gorgeous little boy and here he is in my arms falling sweetly asleep. And that the mess and imperfections of the house are an inherent part of his being alive. Of our being a family. A clean orderly family would just never be. Not for me.

Sometimes I wish this blog was our house.

But in a way, my real house is better.

last bits of summer

Even though people around town have been blogging about a change, I just wasn't ready for it.

But this weekend I camped at the Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival and had the most blissful day in the sun just knitting and looking at yarn and being with my people.

When I got home Martin & I cleared weeds from our garden and pulled up this year's lupines. I picked Sebastian up from babysitting and hugged him hard. We ate outside wearing sweaters. And somehow, I'm ready now. Ready for colder weather, rain pattering on my windowsills, fires in the fireplace, hot chocolate after dinner, my mom arriving to live here in Oregon in a few weeks, and all the fun things we'll do together, getting pumpkins and maybe even making jam, celebrating Halloween, and holing up in my new craft room to design a lot of patterns for our book.

Oh, and joining too many things. This week I joined Zimmermania. It kicked off yesterday while I was sitting around photographing sheep and ogling the new Blue Moon colorways for fall. So I'm already behind, but excited. What Zimmerman creation will it be for me? Something cozy. After all, I no longer have "fall refusal."