Knitters-Knitters

Bad Bug Experience

When I'm sick I dream of reptiles.  Last night it was snapping turtles: I was in the back seat of a Volkswagen Beetle, and we (LB was driving) had pulled into a driveway to visit someone.  I had several blue kittens with me in the backseat.  The woman we were visiting thrust her baby snapping turtles into the backseat window, while I frantically tried to protect the kittens from the turtles.  In real life I'm allergic to cats and would have happily fed the kittens to the snapping turtles one by one, but in this dream the protection of these kittens was serious business.  Finally I allowed one of the turtles to bite me, and it wasn't that bad.  I was about to say this aloud: hey, it's not that bad, but instead I had a coughing attack and the startled turtle bit down HARD, proving that the first bite wasn't a bite at all--just a getting-to-know-you mouthing.

Tonight I was supposed to go out to dinner with three friends from high school: one I haven't seen in about 6 years and for the other two, it's been more than 20.  Instead I'll be huddled on the couch drinking Theraflu and if there's any justice at all, watching Boston Legal on the Netflix DVDs that should arrive today.  My high school makes the one in Dead Poet's Society seem like a "free to be you and me" kind of place, and whenever a reunion year has come up, I've thought to myself:  it's too soon.  But I did want to see these ladies, and the fact that the get-together involved cheesecake means that I am disappointed on many layers levels.  This outing will happen sometime in March and assuming the other three ladies sign the waivers, there will be pictures here on Knitters-Knitters.  But it isn't happening tonight and for that I am Bummed.

Here's something nice I didn't tell you: one morning a few weeks ago when Olive and I were waiting in the main office for Miss S to arrive, a very tiny little girl from Olive's inclusion class approached me and asked, in halting first-graderese, "Can... Olive... come... tomybirthdayparty?"  Olive has returned from school with party invitations in her backpack before, since as most of you know handing out invitations at school means everyone has to be invited.  But Olive had never been invited so cutely, so deliberately, by someone who so clearly wanted her to come.  I told her, "Yes, Olive will come to your party and I'm going to buy you A PONY."  I didn't really say that last part, but she will indeed be receiving My Little Ponies.  LB is taking Olive to the party this afternoon.

I should have known I was getting sick.  Last night when LB and I were watching the local news, there was quite a bit of patter about how best to celebrate Pulaski Day (Monday).  A restaurant was recommended that featured traditional Polish fare.  The camera zoomed in on a ladleful of pork goulash landing on a giant potato pancake, which was then folded over like a taco and adorned with an ice cream scoop-sized portion of sour cream. Finally, the whole log was sprinkled delicately with chives. Instead of jumping off the couch and proclaiming, as anyone would, "That is pure genius and what we will be eating for Pulaski Day come Hell or high water," I thought, huh.  That just doesn't look good to me right now.

King Charles Cavalier Spaniel Speaks Out

It isn't that I bear these Yanks any ill will. 

They do feed me, cosset me, and respond slavishly to my every yowl and whimper.  I've forgiven them that surgery of a rather intimate nature (know what I mean, nudge-nudge?) when I wasn't yet seven months old, and born the humiliation of walking on a lead without complaint.

But this new pasttime of interrupting a girl just when she fancies a bit of a lie-down...well.  No sooner do I close my eyes but the paps materialise in full force, popping and snapping for all their worth.  Oh, Clover's napping!  Clover's napping!  as if this is some sort of public concern. 

It makes me very cross when woken from a nap prematurely.

I won't thank you for it.

And that's not the worst of it.  I've signed no waiver, yet my likeness appears on the Internets every fortnight or more.

What cheek.

Musing on Magpie

A few weeks ago, I decided I'd read enough knitting blog entries bemoaning the discontinuation of Rowan Magpie to warrant getting some for myself.  I wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

I found some on eBay, and Bought It Now.

I am forever changed.  A convert.  I'd be an evangelist, but it occurs to me that if I say how much I love this yarn, the rest of you will flock to eBay and compete with my bids.

But I can't help it.  This yarn is too wonderful: a simple, classic wool yarn that you'd think every large manufacturer would make but for some reason does not.  Now I understand why every time I substituted for Rowan Magpie with something that claimed to be of the same gauge, like Araucania Nature Wool or Malabrigo worsted, the result was a garment not fit to be outerwear.  Malabrigo is too soft and smooth, and Araucania, despite what it says on the label, is simply too thin for size 7 US needles.  Magpie has loft and is easy to break, yet satisfyingly textured. 

Why did Rowan stop making this? 

Rowan Magpie Tweed, Mock Cables

More importantly, if I buy up every skein I can find, will I confuse Rowan Magpie census workers about the true number of skeins in circulation?

The Rowanspun is similar to Magpie, but is, in my opinion, not tough enough for a coat.  It's like a yarn that's suffered a near-death experience and undergone successful counseling, but is left forever felted by the ordeal.  It's great for sweaters and vests, but not a jacket.

 

Rowanspun vest

Magpie is the child from a stable home who shoplifts and occasionally bullies others, but then goes home to a hot dinner and a good night's sleep. 

Magpie Tweed Duffel Coat

I always cringe when knitters refer to pictures of their stash as "yarn porn."  Yet when I put these skeins together and photographed them, there was a definite feeling in the air of...sensuality.

They fought over who got to be on top.

And...

...it's true what they say about the green ones.

Olive and her New Duffel Coat

I have a new coat!

I like it.

It makes me feel impish.

Often I wonder why on House, they always suspect amyloidosis or porphyria but it never is amyloidosis or porphyria.

But mostly I like to play with the spot where my tooth used to be.

I'm ready to go have speech therapy with Maria now.

But it's not a Maria day.

I totally get the posing for the camera thing.

I am too cool for words.

11am, a Love Story

This morning I slept late.  I won't tell you what time I got up because if I did you would all, women and men alike, stampede to Northbrook to declare yourselves as LB's truly intended partner in life: LB, this most modest and indulgent of Sacramento boys who does not question spending the entire morning alone in the task of caring for and feeding 6 children.

My staircase descent signals LB's chance to shower, and while he goes upstairs I think about today's entry.  I had a long and involved idea about photographing my rapidly growing collection of Rowan Magpie in various postures on the new snow outside, and interspersing these photos with lines from Robert Louis Stevenson's, "The Land of Counterpane."  The snow being the counterpane, of course.

When I look out the window, it occurs to me: My yarn would get cold and wet.  And, more importantly, I would get cold and wet. 

Instead I re-read the poem and decide it's a sweet poem, but it's not me.  Instead, a line jumps into my consciousness from the portion of my brain devoted to Woody Allen:  My wife is immature. Whenever I take a bath, she sinks my boats.  This quote is far more interesting than the counterpane poem and infinitely more "me," but difficult to recreate in yarn. 

Time to shower; LB should be done.

When I go back upstairs into our bedroom, I see LB lying on the bed, showered and fully dressed, listening to his i-pod.  The cad!  Hiding from the children and thus, cutting into my time to hide from the children!  When he starts to laugh, I ask him what he's listening to.

"An old Woody Allen routine." 

"Which joke was it?"

He says, I saw my ex-wife the other day.  I almost didn't recognize her, because I'd never seen her before with her wrists closed.

Despite my somewhat cynical blog persona, I love these moments of gleeful coincidence: evidence that fate has intended LB and me for each other and each other alone.  We had both, seconds prior, been reliving Woody Allen jokes about his ex-wife.  What more proof could a woman need?  

I lie down next to LB.  If  I want my feet to be near his feet, then I sacrifice being  face to face and am instead face to chest.  If I choose faces, then my feet reach his knees.  I choose feet.  Then I tell him, "Last night I dreamt that you made me a seafood meal.  After I ate it, I didn't feel well and went straight to the bathroom to be sick.  When I went to flush, I saw the toilet was full of live crabs, tiny frogs, and little shrimp swimming around."

He says, "Ah.  I made you fresh seafood."

I make a sudden decision.  "Today my blog's going to be a love story."

And he asks, "About whom?"

I told you he was modest.

3 AM

Olive, who has been asleep since around 9:30 PM,  wakes up.  The first thing she notices is that while she may have fallen asleep on the couch in LB's arms, she is now in her Little Girl Bed.  Little Girl Bed is actually a twin bed at the other end of our room, with a very new mattress and a down comforter and a sweet little-girl sized pink chenille pillow, but there is no other human in flailing distance and this makes Little Girl Bed suddenly unsatisfactory.

Olive enters from LB's side of our bed, scampering over him and landing squarely between us.  Needless to say we both wake up but since LB is a light sleeper and I'm on Ambien not, he regains his senses faster.  Then it's a mad dash as the two of us struggle to exit the larger bed and secure a quiet, solitary rest in the now-vacant Little Girl Bed.  Usually LB wins this sprint.

9 times out of 10, Olive will fall back asleep next to me in the big bed.  But on the tenth night, she wakes fully and begins to sing.  Lalalalalalalala!  Plah!  Plah!  Plah! or perhaps, her newest sound, which is not transcribable and sounds like a flock of seagulls overhead. 

Now I am Awake.  I notice that the white-noise fan is on low instead of high, making it easier for me to hear the distracting sounds of the house.  Agatha turns over in her bed by leaping into the air like a fish, and her landing can be heard several rooms down.  Clover snores in her puppy house--cute at 9am during the children's school, but less so at 3am.  Do I get up and turn the fan to high?  If I do so, will the change in sound level rouse Olive, who has now quieted and just might fall back asleep, allowing me to do the same?  Perhaps I should forget about falling asleep, and instead, revisit my past 43 years: beginning with traumatic events involving a library copy of Peter Rabbit and a very mean nursery school teacher, and ending with a thorough evaluation of my parenting skills, weight management, and the fact that I don't have a two-book deal with Viking. 

Bad, bad idea.

Instead, I slink out of bed and wake LB.  I tell him, "My turn to have Little Girl Bed!"  He always says, "But I just got here!" and I say, "Noooo, you've been asleep for hours."

10 Honest Things

The lovely and talented Jen of Windy Ridge tagged me for the 10 Honest Things meme, and I am only too happy to oblige by providing you with ten more extraneous details about what makes me me.  Interspersed with the trivia will be pictures of the duffel coat (in progress) I'm making for Olive from Rowan Magpie, a photo of Clover hiding from me after her bath, and a picture of a card made for Olive by one of her classmates.

1) When I was little, my cousin told me she'd figured out the Tooth Fairy was really her parents.  For several years, I thought this meant Aunt Nora and Uncle Ira of New Jersey were the Tooth Fairy for everyone.

2) If you take me approximately three blocks from my house and spin me around three times, there's a good chance I'll never find my way home.

3) I write with my left hand, but do just about everything else with my right.

4) Late in their lives (after my parents married), my father's mother married my mother's father.  Until I was about 12, I thought everyone's grandparents did this.

5)  I've recently "discovered" the discontinued yarn Rowan Magpie, and I fear I won't rest until I own all of it.  All. Of. It.

6) I spend a goodly amount of time wondering what my dog thinks about, and quizzing LB on what he thinks the dog thinks about.

7) In our home, we really do that thing of saying certain things twicers-twicers.

8) When I hear someone refer to her spouse as her Best Friend, my first thought is that she and her husband despise each other.

9)  Plants hate me.  Any plant in my care will die, regardless of my efforts.  Perhaps because of my efforts.

10)  I have a girl-crush on Liv Ullman.  I don't miss Bergman yet during this self-imposed exile, but I miss Liv.

3 PM

A few weeks ago I wrote you about what happens around here in the mornings, a typical day beginning just before 8 and ending around 9:15 AM.  Every so often I'll pick a different hour of the day to write about, and these will all be grouped under the category called Hours on the right.

Today, I bring you 3 PM.  It's a time we feel rather than recognize.  Even Clover senses it and wakes from the exhaustive process of napping, moving to another patch of sunlight and re-napping.  She demands to go outside.  By this time Dana and Agatha are done with their school.  Daisy is finished or will finish shortly, and Anatole will either be long since done or, conversely and contrarily, stalwart in his refusal to allow the day's knowledge to sink in.  His reluctance is something as yet not understood by me, LB, or even Anatole himself, but at least once every few weeks, it's there.  Sabina is never done with her work at this point, but she--along with everyone else--does a quick perimeter check to make sure all the breakables and favorite toys of the moment are Up High.

At 3:10 I leave the house to get Olive.  Since it's winter and the waiting parents are all crowded in the vestibule, I don't add to the traffic by bringing another child with me (on warm days they take turns accompanying me).  I leave the stroller outside while I go in to wait with the other moms.

Northbrook is significantly Jewish.  This is something that comforts and pleases me for many reasons, one of which being that when I wait in the vestibule with the other moms, I am--for the only time in my life, ever--of almost average height.  Sometimes the ladies chat me up, but there is a definite sense of my otherness.  I'm waiting for a special-ed child, and, more importantly, they all know I live in Ashraf's house.  My presence is both new and probably temporary. 

All the moms know who I'm there to pick up, and they all know by now that as soon as Olive sees me, she will tear down the hallway and into the vestibule like a beam of light: a limb-flailing, squealing beam of light who may knock down whichever child or adult is in her path.  Often my first signal that Olive's coming is the parting of the sea of moms.

Olive runs toward the vestibule, her face a mixture of eagerness and anxiety.  Miss K holds her hand, her other arm around Olive's opposite shoulder as she struggles to keep her from running too fast.  Olive greets me not with a hug, but with a shriek of delight and hand gestures that look like she's about to say, Ta-DAH!  And for my next trick...

Olive hands me her backpack and sits happily in her stroller.  On the way home she tells me about her day with a series of plah, plah, plah sounds.  When we arrive, her siblings greet her enthusiastically, helping her remove her coat, her hat, her shoes and socks.  Olive is STARVING when she gets home, and usually Sabina has prepared the Ramen noodles so they are ready and waiting.  Dana likes to sit next to Olive while she eats, Clover parks herself under Olive's stool (since she can always be counted on to spill a bit) and Agatha opens Olive's backpack to get the Blue Folder.  Olive receives a daily progress report, but sometimes her teachers get behind and there's no report that day.  Maybe there will be 2 reports the next day, or no report for several days and then a whole bunch at the end of the week.   Olive is graded her for daily activities on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the highest.  For the most part, Olive is a 4 student.

We ask Olive things like, Did you have a community outing?  Did you do cooking?  Did you play with A?  J?  Maybe M?and try to gauge what happened that day by her reaction to the questions.  If she's had community, she'll almost always giggle and hide her face when we ask about it.  At hearing a friend's name, she may smile or do askancers-askancers, remembering something.  One day recently she was especially happy when we got home and spent the rest of the afternoon marching around with an extra-confident strut.  I found out the next day that she'd had community and went bowling for the first time.  Apparently, Olive loves LOVES bowling.

Here and there, other things may happen to change the 3 PM routine.  If it's a day when we see Magical Realism Maria, everything happens faster and Olive and I head for the car right after potty (Maria provides snack).  Sometimes Olive is tired or out of sorts, and I get hand-pats in the vestibule instead of gleeful gesticulations.  Sometimes there's ravioli instead of Ramen, or leftover rigatoni with meat sauce. 

At 3 PM CST the bell rings in NY, signaling the end of the trading day.  Here in Ashraf's house, there is little feeling of closure.  Our house in Chicago still hasn't sold.  The ramifications of Morgan Stanley absorbing Smith Barney are still unknown.  And whether or not the blue folder contains a detailed a progress report with marginalia, we never feel like we have a satisfactory answer to the question of  What did you do today, Olive?

All That

If you get to be old enough, you realize that few things are really all they're cracked up to be, even if you enter into them with the whole-hearted enthusiasm of one who wants to be delighted, wants to be overwhelmed with the amazingness of said experience.  Canning my own green beans fits into that category: it sounded inspiring and earth-motherish when I ordered my pressure-canner, and yet, the finished product was canned green beans.  Marginally better than canned green beans from a store, but not so superior that if you didn't like canned green beans to begin with, you'd love these. 

Some of you may gasp in horror to hear me say this, but natural childbirth also falls into this category for me.  In the moment there was a thrill of achievement and satisfaction of having done it, a nod to the fact that it was better for the baby and nice to not have to recover from anesthesia.  But now?  Olive and Agatha are no more attached to me than Daisy and Sabina for having been born too soon after arrival at the hospital for anesthesia to be considered.  Obviously, emergency c-section would have to be my least favorite birthing memory, but my most favorite would be the arrival of Daisy: the combination of a good epidural and a mirror meant that I could watch and experience in relative comfort--like being pulled on stage to participate in my most favorite play.  Oh, I was participating fully in my two unmedicated births, but I was also extremely eager--and at various points, begging--for the play to be over.

So what's got me thinking about this today?  The three imminent birthdays that happen in what feels like a bang bang (brief pause) bang chez Sullivan at this time of year: Dana's on the 18th, Agatha's on the 22th, and Daisy's at the end of March.  Three very different arrival memories for me: domestic adoption, an unmedicated and precipitous labor that nearly came to fruition in the car, and an epidural-enhanced vaginal birth. 

And yet, the only thing that really matters now is that one wants Chinese food and everything and anything to do with cars, one wants fettuccine Alfredo, knitting books and fuzzy yarn for knitting little animals, and one wants hamburgers, cheesecake and sewing supplies.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Last night, LB brought home some Valentine's Day treats for everyone.  For the big kids there were chocolate-covered fortune cookies.  For me there was a pretty plant.  (I'll pause now for those who know me to gaze downward and say a brief prayer for this unfortunate piece of living greenery and the horrible death it will soon experience.)  I'm generally against giving someone a plant as a present unless said recipient is a known plant lover, in the same way I'm against giving someone a puppy as a surprise. However, unbeknownst to him, LB has given me many skeins of discontinued Rowan Magpie for Valentine's Day, so it's all good.

Olive's present was a Mylar balloon.

Yay, Mylar balloon!

Most fun toy ever!

Whackwhackwhackwhackwhack!

They don't last very long in Olive's hands. Here's the beginning of the end: