Knitters-Knitters

Stories of my Misspent Youth (Badger's Book Meme)

I'm jumping on the bandwagon with my own childhood favorites.  Is this officially a meme now? 

Several years ago, I went on Alibris and bought as many titles from my childhood as I could remember.  This one headed the list, along with Josephine and Hugo. I identified strongly with Josephine, the lonely little girl who was the youngest-by-far of her family, like me:

I was never a nature buff, but I loved this book.

And this one:

And let's not forget these (not pictured: The Saucepan Journey).  Yes, I have always wanted to be Swedish.

Lois Lenski.  When I was a child I thought I'd discovered her...

...and Edward Eager.  You can imagine my horror when I learned my sister had read these before me.

This series of novels destroyed my innocence.  Yes, it's where I learned how sausage is made:

I wanted to love At the Back of the North Wind, but could not, even with all the beautiful color plates.  I guess I've always been more of a meat grinding aficionado than a fairy enthusiast.

I had a very hard time tracking down this book, perhaps because I remembered it as The Sea Serpent of Trott, by Horse.

Some of my old favorites made it easier by still being in print, like this series. Who doesn't like a Moomin?  I don't want to know such a person.

I loved everything by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.  If I turn this house upside-down, I should be able to find The Egypt Game and Eyes in the Fishbowl, too.

My favorite series of all times, and the reason I had wanted to name Olive Gertrude.  It's a good thing LB won that battle: Olive is so very much an Olive.

My girls didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I did.  I can remember pouting as a 'tween about kids in the olden days having all the fun: I wanted to be exiled to Siberia, too.

Hey, how'd that get in here?

Sigh.  The Skyhook.

Sunday, Monday, and Ron Nemesis

Here's Sabina's confirmation class, in its entirety.  8th grade boys look like a completely different species than 8th grade girls, don't they? 

A shot of the crowd.  LB's mom is on the left, in the green shirt and black sweater.

Here's a lovely picture of the seed stitch, ruffle-edged scarf I knit two years ago, with Jo Sharp silk georgette yarn and 2.5mm needles.  Also pictured: LB and his parents.

LB, his parents and the 4 middles:

Here's Sabina being baptized.  The shiny pastor on the left is more or less responsible for our coming to this church.  He arranged for Olive's Sunday School class to have a extra teacher (his wife!) so that Olive would always have a 1:1 ratio, preemptively planned for Olive's supervision so that LB and I could both attend membership classes, and somehow makes it feel as if we're the ones doing him a favor.

On Monday Olive had school and the rest of us went on a tour of Autism Academy (home of the Sacred Notebook), which LB's parents had never seen.   It was wonderful to see Judy (the program director), Jeni (speech therapist), and the lady at the front desk who always had a special hello for Agatha (my usual drive companion).  Teacher Emily was occupied with a student having a bathroom issue, so we did not get to see her.  It's noteworthy that in the year since we've been gone, the players at Autism Academy have remained the same. Olive's current classroom has had 4 staff changes since she's been attending.  Each change has been met with backsliding, periods of sleeplessness and increased anxiety.  And Olive didn't much care for it, either.  Her aide, Miss Sally, has been our rock.

After the academy tour, we went to the pond across the street and saw my old nemesis:

I'm reminded of a book or a story I read in which the main character has a nemesis named Ron Nemesis.  But where did I read this, and who wrote it?  I asked LB if  it rang any bells, and he said, Sounds like Chao.  It does indeed sound like something from the writings of Tom Chao.  If it's yours, TXC, weigh in and claim it.

We broke into study groups and took pictures.  The best candids happen when the subjects are posing for someone else.

The four middles, again:

Agatha collecting dandelions:

Dandelions tend to shrivel in captivity, so the children left them for the next visitors to the pond...whoever they may be.

Rain

LB's parents are visiting us this weekend from California!  They have brought treats from their Trader Joe's, which is infinitely more sophisticated than our Trader Joe's.

We have many chocolate bars:

Spicy dried mangoes:

Jalapeno crunchy things, for Olive, of course:

These are MINE ALL MINE.  Early in our courtship, I told LB I loved him more than craisins.  He did not get the significance of this, until I attached myself to him like a remora and made him have all these children.

This weekend is Sabina's confirmation.  LB's mom made her a hand-beaded necklace for the occasion, in this beautiful box...

...along with a little book, which she also made:

I'm home alone with my best friend:

The others are going to the library, and shopping for playing cards.  My mother-in-law is going to teach the children a card game called "tongue."  I'm going to eat homemade lemon shortbread...

...while we wait for the rain to stop.

Patience

Whenever I need a break from too many adult-sized knitting projects with heavy wool, I tell myself that the remedy is to knit a newborn garment with teeny needles and lightweight yarn.  I have knit long enough to know better.  Baby garments on little needles take forever.  FOREVER.  And the entire time I'm working, I'm envisioning the baby becoming larger and larger, outgrowing the little sweater I haven't even finished yet.  Other people's pregnancies fly by while mine inched along in centimeters, but knitting for other people's babies takes exactly as long as knitting for my own did.  Maybe longer, because my eyes are a lot older than they were when I was having babies.  In fact, I think my eyes may be older than the rest of me.  My spleen is light and carefree, my ankles so youthful that I can go months without knowing I have them.  But the eyes?  They complain.   

Often when people hear I have 6 kids, they say, "You must be a very patient person."  I'm not a patient person, not even a little bit.  I want everything yesterday.  What's more, I don't believe impatience can be cured.  You might think having a child like Olive, for whom each milestone takes forever and who backslides at the slightest change in routine, would make me more patient.  It does not.  I am, however, better at handling the frustration that comes from thwarted impatience.  Maybe this is what people mean when they tell me I must be a patient person.  It just takes too long to say, "You must be a person well-accustomed to accepting the frustration of indefinite waiting."

Can you tell I'm getting irritated at this poor little bamboo sweater?

Daisy was born almost four weeks early and was a much crankier baby than her big sister, but she has grown into an extremely patient young lady.  She knows how to use the sewing machine, but prefers to make her seams by hand.  Her stitches are so tiny I can barely see them.  The stitching on this slice of cherry pie represents big, decorative stitches for her. 

Last night Daisy was working on making a tiny purse, and even seeing her stitches required LB and me to do all sorts of gesticulations with our arms and our eye glasses and turning on extra lights.  I was eager to take a picture of those stitches today in natural light, but sometime between then and now Daisy finished the purse. 

Those stitches are all hidden on the inside of the lining.  I don't know what surprised me more: that she finished those rows of tiny stitches so quickly, or that she doesn't mind if no one ever knows how hard she worked.

Restraint

Magical Realism Maria has a dolly she's been trying to get Olive interested in for weeks.  Dolly is roughly 30 years old, with scraggly blonde hair and no clothing.  Olive is very interested in Dolly's bathtub and in the soap bubbles and sponge that go along with "playing with baby," but she has, several times now, flung Dolly across the room in a line drive at Maria's printer.  Last week Maria did get Olive to towel off Dolly after her bath, or more accurately, to rub her down briskly, wrap her up like a taco and bang her head a few times on the corner of the play table.  To say Olive had no affection for Dolly is a gross understatement; I suspect she was actually jealous of her, for getting to play naked in the bubbles and for having known Maria longer.

Yesterday after Olive thoroughly scrubbed Dolly's face and eyes with the soapy sponge and snapped her with the towel a few times,  Maria said, "Baby needs a hug and a kiss."  I expected Dolly to make another speedy connection with Maria's printer, but this time Olive picked her up, hugged her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. 

While Olive gives hugs freely and will always present her own cheek benevolently when the word "kiss" is mentioned, I have never seen Olive proffer a kiss of her own to anyone or anything.  I'd like to say Maria and I exchanged quiet glances of satisfaction without making a huge deal over it and therefore inhibiting Olive from future displays of Dolly-love.  And I'd like to add that we didn't ask her to do it again repeatedly, following each kiss with deafening applause and breaking all sense of play therapy momentum... but I can't.  Maria and I turned into teenage girls at a Beatles concert.  There were hands in the air and celebratory high fives.  There was squealing.  There was lots of kissing on Olive. 

Just thinking about it now, I want to go to Olive's school, pull her out of class and kiss her some more.

Get Me Driver to Bamboo Town

The easier the knitting, the more my mind wanders.  This particular sweater, Elizabeth Zimmermann's February Baby Sweater, is something I've made about 15 times before and my brain is free to go elsewhere until completion. 

I think about the sweater's recipient, whose name is Sophie.  Meryl Streep occupies a slightly larger portion of my brain than usual since seeing Doubt, and I pretend I'm making a prop for an obscure sequel to Sophie's Choice.  It's called Sophie's Cardigan, and it's all about a Polish immigrant who must choose between a shawl-collared and a crew neck sweater.  The target audience is...small.

Or I think about what a pain it is to knit with bamboo.  Easy pattern + yarn that splits easily = no momentum.   Flickers of annoyance invariably lead to lamentations about the weather.  Here's a picture from yesterday, but today looks no different.  The color of the sky as far as I can see is coal grey:

Let's go to a happier yet still appropriate song, shall we?  Like "Bamboo Town" from Tom Tom Club, since I'm knitting with bamboo.  I would like to hear it now, but have nothing on which to play vinyl.  According to iTunes the entire album--Close to the Bone--does not exist.   There is no question that it's warm in Bamboo Town and maybe by the time the CD gets here from Amazon, it'll be warm in Northbrook, too. 

When we first moved here, it didn't seem possible for cold weather to exist at the intersection of Tamarind and Banyan. 

I try to keep this picture in my head:

Figenthaler

Today LB and I watched Doubt on DVD.  I liked it.  I did not believe Meryl Streep's accent this time around, but I still enjoyed the movie.  There's a scene near the beginning--when Sister Aloysius enters Sister James's classroom and all the students sit at terrified attention--that reminded me of something from my own childhood.  When I attended Hartford Avenue elementary, the principal was a pale watercolor of a person whose name I forget, but the vice principal, Mr. Carrington, was the Scariest Man in the World.  I'm pretty sure he was 7' 3" tall, and his voice sounded like gunfire. You never knew when he was going to drop by your classroom for an impromptu visit, and when he did everyone was afraid.  Mr. Carrington would walk up and down the rows of desks very slowly, just like Sister Aloysius in the movie--making sure everyone's hands were folded on top of their desks.  He never lost his temper and this was long past the days when corporal punishment was allowed in the classroom, but his scariness was undeniable and universal.

There was a boy in my class from 2nd through 4th grade named Donald Figenthaler.  Donald was a strawberry blond.  He had big ears and he blushed easily.  I don't remember him as especially naughty or loud or especially anything at all, but without fail, Mr. Carrington would pause next to his desk and say, "How're you doing, Figenthaler?  Are you behaving yourself, Figenthaler?" and even, "What do you have to say for yourself, Figenthaler?"  He said Donald's last name as if he wanted to add, "...assuming that is indeed your real name."  With each question Donald's answer was quieter and quieter, his ears redder and redder, and I always wondered what the deal was with Donald Figenthaler, anyway.  What he had done to warrant Mr. Carrington's notice, and how could I make sure that I never did whatever it was that brought about such unwelcome attention?

I had no direct contact with Mr. Carrington (he never paused at my desk) until 4th grade, when it was my turn to help out at the school store and return the cash box to the vice principal's office at the end of the day.  I remember being terrified, but Mr. Carrington at his desk was a much different person from Mr. Carrington in the classroom.  He was friendly; he even smiled.  And when he smiled it was a natural smile, as if this were not the first time he'd done it. 

I left Hartford Elementary after 4th grade, but a friend of mine who was graduated from there told me that in ensuing years, it became apparent that Mr. Carrington was nice.  He even had kids of his own and they were not terrified of him.  When you're a child, it doesn't occur to you that an adult might do something out of sheer whimsy, just for a little break in the day without realizing the impact that bit of fun might have on others. 

Never in a million years would I have guessed that Mr. Carrington just really, really liked to say the name Figenthaler.

In Search of Just Right

This week has been a productive one for my children.  A few nights ago the three big girls made another cake--the same recipe as the heavy, Teutonic concoction from several months ago--but they beat the eggs sufficiently before adding the other ingredients.  Then they made frosting from scratch, using leftover food coloring from Easter to make the thoroughly pastel creation you see below:

It was delicious, and deceptively light.  There's an unspoken rule around here that if it's your birthday, you are assured the last slice of your birthday cake.  And there's another unspoken rule that if the cake is not for someone's birthday, the last piece goes to Mommy Olive.  Never mind that Olive really isn't big on cake and would much rather have a bowl of kimchee noodles sprinkled liberally with Tabasco Cheez-its; she always get the last piece.  This system discourages the older children from making an issue of that last slice, and I'm always willing to take one for the team in the name of family harmony. 

Olive had a particularly good session with Magical Realism Maria this week.  Maria created a game involving a mixing bowl, a wooden spoon, several pieces of wooden fruit and a muffin tin.  She separated several of the fruits according to type, each type occupying one cup of the muffin tin.  Then she put the remaining fruit in the mixing bowl.  After vigorously mixing the fruit, Olive would use the wooden spoon to scoop out each piece and place it in the appropriate muffin cup, matching apples to apples, etc.  This game was so much fun it was almost unbearable, combining two of Olive's favorite things: cooking and Maria.  Olive's hands were trembling with excitement, and several times she had to leap from her chair and run across the room to turn Maria's printer off and on and off and on to release excess enthusiasm.  Once or twice, Olive tried out the undesirable combination of wooden spoon and Maria, but there were no serious injuries.

Since the weather has finally warmed, the children have been playing outside more.  Yesterday Anatole and Agatha worked hard on making this structure:

They call it a house, but to me it looks more like a delicate fish skeleton.  It's very long, and it took them hours to collect and arrange all those tiny twigs.

You know what also took hours?  The corrugated ribbing and first several inches of LB's Spiral Yoke sweater.  Or should I say, the completely unusable ribbing and first several inches of LB's sweater.  I painstakingly followed the EPS guidelines to create a width of  39" for my 6' 1" 150 lb husband, and instead I have the beginnings of a sweater that's 44" around.  It's as if the gods of knitting read my last post about "too big" being okay, and wanted to remind me that too big is indeed a problem if the sweater's recipient doesn't plan on growing.  I am absolutely sick about it.  SICK.

The striped Debbie Bliss pullover is progressing slowly due to all the color changes...

 

...but it is, at least, moving forward.

Knitting by Ear

There's nothing quite like botching the size of a garment to make me lose all interest in the pattern.  Sabina wanted one of these zippered jackets, too, but she's going to have to wait until I recover from the trauma of making Olive's jacket too small. 

I tried it on her before blocking, but felt sure that the washing and drying process would make the jacket gain an extra inch in width.  And it did, but it turns out that Olive, without my knowledge or consent, grew significantly since the last time I made her a sweater.  An inch was not enough.

Since wearing this jacket would cut off all circulation in her perfectly cylindrical torso, I'm on the lookout for a little girl in the size 4T to 5T range who'd like a handknit wool jacket.  Do you know one?  Let me know in the comments, and I'll do a drawing if there are more than one of you interested.  You pay shipping only.

I've just begun a new sweater for Olive.

I'm a little wary of Debbie Bliss patterns since they tend to run very WIDE, but if it doesn't fit Olive it'll work for Agatha.  And if not Agatha, then Daisy.  Too big is always doable, but too small?  Heartbreak.

Here's something you may not know about me.  If a television show has the words Real Housewives in the title, I will watch it.  Orange County, New York, Atlanta--I've seen them all.  ALL.  If Bravo ran The Real Housewives of Scranton, PA, I'd watch that, too.  The problem with these particular shows is that the dialogue is skimpy and often hard to hear, which requires me to look up at the screen (I treat the TV like a radio, since I can't touch-knit any more than I can touch-type).  Last night I started an easy project specifically to work on during The Real Housewives of New York: a sweater for LB.  This will be Meg Swansen's "Spiral Yoke" pullover, from Handknitting (I'll post a picture when I'm further along--Simon's cursing attack in the car set me back a little).  I expect to finish the body and sleeves at some point during The Real Housewives of New Jersey, take advantage of Housewives Hiatus while I do the more complicated yoke decreases, and then be done by fall--just in time for LB to wear it in cold weather.  I can count on him not to grow in the interim.

In order for there to be fall, there must first be summer.  It's only fair, especially since we seem to be skipping spring altogether.  I have no pretty flowers or even green grass to show you, not even from other people's back yards.  It's still cold here and perpetually overcast.  There is no discernible sun.  On a more positive note (groan), the extra-long winter has given Anatole more time to work on the piano, which has gripped his interest since his one lesson from Aunt Lo. 

Notice the splayed toes on the pedal.

Anatole reads notes fluently now--something I managed not to achieve during my three years of lessons.  Either my teacher never figured out my secret, or she just didn't care.  I may not be able to play the piano, but all that ear practice makes me very good at the game Guess the Celebrity Voice Over.  You can't fool me, Adam Arkin!  I always know when it's you.

Is Your Dog Getting Enough Sleep?

Today it's dark and cold and raining.  And cold.  Did I mention it's cold?  It's a perfect day for naps, and for discussing Clover's nap habits.  Like most adult dogs, Clover sleeps twenty-two hours per day.  She spends the two remaining hours eating, begging for food and attention, running very fast for short distances, pantomiming suggestive and disturbing acts with her stuffed raccoon, and barking at both real and imagined rabbits predators.  Those two hours usually takes place in the evenings, and as you can imagine, require a lot of resting up first.

Until now, Clover's sleep was often interrupted by the search for a better nap site.  Those taxing moments of going from the couch to the easy chair to the patch of sunlight by the back window and back to the couch again were seriously cutting into her rest.  

No longer.

Clover has slept under my computer desk occasionally, but moving the fur blanket to this spot has changed her day--nay, her life--forever.  The combination of  fake fur and a four-sided enclosure with me serving as the fourth side has made this the place to rest, the nap site by which all other sleep locations shall be judged. 

Every now and then she gives a little snore to tell me how much she likes it.