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You naughty, enabling passel of Lampwicks, all of you! Luckily I have Agatha to tell me that mailing the scarf to Miss Sally at a later date is not the same, and that a gift card, though nice, is not what I'd originally intended and even if Sally never knew I would know.
And Agatha would know.
Today's row count: 127
Total row count thus far: 440
Rows to go: 320
It's day 3 of my Doubtful Scarf project, and I think the strain is starting to get to me.
There's something about speed-knitting alone at night while the rest of the family sleeps that makes a person a little squirrely. I'm not even halfway done. I'm too deep into it to turn back, but not far enough along to see light at the end. My right index finger? Mutilated. My left eye twitches. I've got a cramp in my elbow, a twinge just to the left of my spine, and a groin pull. I'm not sure how that last one happened.
Also, I don't want to alarm anyone but I think my coffee table's staring at me while I work, lying in wait. Can you see the howler monkey in the veneer along the side there?
Here's a better picture of him. You see him, right? It's not just me.
Today's row count: 105
Total row count thus far: 313
Rows to go: 447
Progress: glacial.
Morale: low. The tip of my right index finger feels like it's been jabbed repeatedly with a dull needle.
Today's row count: 80
Total row count thus far: 208
Rows to go: 552
Today is Olive's IEP meeting, and I'm not there. LB is fielding this one. Originally I'd planned to go with him--we've been to a few of these together and I've been to several alone--but this is the first time LB's gone without me. I can't decide if I'm horrified by my behavior or slightly impressed. I just know a little voice told me, pace yourself. There will be more IEP meetings.
Lest you think the little voice only advises me to do things that are conveeeenient, it also told me that Miss Sally's end of the year thank-you gift should be a striped scarf, like the one the Doubtful Guest wears. It would have been nice if Little Voice had thought of this before May 27th when Olive's last day of school is June 4th, but I'm excited about this project. Nothing boosts my creativity like a time crunch.
I'm using Hifa 2 yarn by Hillesvag, on size 3mm needles. Since Edward Gorey was so thoughtful as to limit his drawing to black and white, no one can say the scarf shouldn't be dark navy and ecru. The scarf will be 76" in length--that way we get a little of the Doubtful Guest drape without being too long for practicality (Miss Sally is about 5' 3"). I'm knitting it in the round for extra loft. Sally will appreciate this in February, and it means I don't have to purl.
After a few missteps, I've settled on 90 stitches on the needle. My plan is to have 19 stripes, each one 4" wide. That comes out to 40 rows in each stripe. For those of you who like to know the math, there will be 760 rows in this scarf, or 68,400 stitches. In order to get it blocked and fringed in time, I can only take 6 evenings to knit. I have to do a minimum of 125 rows a day. Before bed every night, I'll post my evening tally.
Wednesday night: 128 rows complete.
Other than the assault of dental work on Saturday morning, it's been a pretty calm weekend.
Before we went to the dentist, we stopped by the old house to deliver the ice bin we'd accidentally moved with us to this house. The old place looks much cleaner and prettier than when we lived there, with a door wreath and flower pots and... well, cleanness.
Here, LB is explaining the complicated technique we used for dispersing the hot air that sets off the smoke alarm when one opens the clothes dryer too soon after the end of the cycle.
Olive went to a sleep-under on Sunday, which, it turns out, has nothing to do with taking a nap during a flight to Australia. It involves many seven-year-old girls getting together in their pajamas to do everything but sleep. It's a lot like a sleep-over that way.
That evening LB and I took a long walk with Olive in the stroller, and I took more pictures of other people's vegetation.
It was a cold and dark day, but I've figured out how to use the "color saturation" feature on my photo editor to reproduce the effect of actual sunlight.
We have lilacs in our front yard that look slightly smaller than the lilacs we had in the back, fainter in color, and they bloomed two weeks later. They also have a milder smell. I've been calling them wussie lilacs. Wussie, tardy lilacs.
The hostas have unfurled, and despite your insistence that I couldn't kill them if I tried, I'm taking no chances and am steering clear of them.
I over-saturated here; the ground isn't really purple.
Olive appears to be having a growth spurt and wants to eat nonstop. Fortunately, her favorite food is Ramen noodles.
Sister has made the mistake of taking longer to eat her noodles than Olive did.
Olive has subtle, gracious way of letting you know she wants your food.
Here, Olive pats Sister on the chest to indicate that she is permitted to have the next bite. She's nothing if not equitable.
This afternoon, the middle Sullivans were invited over to the neighbor's house to play on his trampoline. There they learned the awful truth, the secret I was counting on taking to my grave: that trampoline belonged here but was given to the neighbors when Ashraf's tenants requested that it be removed, for safety reasons. Just call me Meanest Mommy Ever.
I thought I might make Olive an outfit or two this weekend, but it turns out industrial sewing machines with outboard motors don't appreciate lying fallow for over a year and then being expected to function. On Thursday, a sewing machine repairman who makes house calls (I didn't know there was such a thing) is coming over to service it. For reasons he didn't explain, he only takes cash. No credit cards, no checks. I'm wondering if this means he won't want his picture appearing on my blog. That would be a shame.
Slow progress was made on this sweater.
The girls did some baking. My teeth still hurt and there's a piece of excess amalgam that's driving my tongue insane, but I think I can manage to choke down a little cake.
I love my dentist. Even though she found three cavities today, involving both sides of my mouth. Even though she accidentally shot one of the Novocaine injections directly into the pocket between my left cheek and lower jaw, causing my tongue to have a teeny-tiny seizure, not numbing the tooth in that area at all so that I felt that first rotation of the drill like the piercing of an arrow, which made her have to inject even more novocaine. Even though my entire face was so numb afterwards that when I tried to smile, the upper lip pulled to the right while the lower lip went left, the eyes drooped, and my facial expression was turned into that of a peaceful llama. Even though she sent me home with no fun prescriptions and I was too shaken by the horror of the experience to thoroughly enjoy my trip to the Sweden Shop afterward.
I think I love her because she has the hands of a hummingbird and she always tells me how brave I'm being, as if all her grown-up patients enter a state of anxiety that mimics the appearance of full rigor and have to be reminded to breathe. And I love her because she dove right into my jaw to fill those cavities without making me come back another day, even though I'd only booked a teeth-cleaning appointment. Mostly I love her because she actually manages to get her hummingbird hands into Olive's mouth without incident, and if I didn't have LB to tell me how her part of the appointment really went down, I'd think Olive cooperated fully and calmly.
I did manage to buy something at the Sweden Shop. Her name is Little My, and she's now scowling over my kitchen. I like how wikipedia describes this "fiercely independent" mymble:
When she wants something done, she does it straight away.
I have four projects on the needles right now, three of which all held more initial interest for me than this sweater. But at some point, I got far enough in the striping sequence that the other projects fell by the wayside and now completing this particular garment is all I want to do.
How does this happen? I know it's not an issue of which item I'm most eager to own determining which project gets the most attention. If that were true, the Jitterbug blanket would be my project of choice.
And it's not because I think this sweater is turning out better than the others. If anything, the warbles in each stripe remind me why I rarely knit with cotton (it's unforgiving), why I don't bother to swatch (it's useless if you're wildly inconsistent in how tightly you pull each stitch), and why I'm a blocking zealot (everything comes out in the wash).
Look at the white garter stitch band. It clearly reads, "Hi! I was knit at 11:45 pm on a particularly long and tiring Tuesday. Boy, that Jen likes her Ambien!" while the dark raspberry band says, "Caffeinated, knit at noon, and on a well-rested weekend. Go ahead--bounce a quarter off me. Sproingggg."
Despite these tension inconsistencies, I don't want to put the sweater down. Just sitting here writing to you, I'm filled with longing, missing it. I'm a lonely shell of myself, half-engaged in any conversation I'm having, counting the minutes until Stripey Sweater and I are back together. And now that I'm at my favorite part--the long expanse of the torso is over and I'm picking up armhole stitches to knit the sleeves--I feel it's safe to make a formal announcement. Stripey Sweater and I are going steady.
If you don't mind, I think we'll have a little time alone now.
Happy Anniversary, LB!
