Knitters-Knitters

Home?

For several weeks we hovered in that danger zone of unpacking, where you've basically moved in but scattered throughout the house are 8-10 boxes which run the risk of becoming a permanent part of your landscape--and thus--invisible. This week, we've been tackling a small stack of boxes in the basement playroom, and have found a few items we haven't seen in two moves.

First off, a coat hand-knit by my grandmother.  I wore this quite a bit in college and felt very retro vintage.  And warm.

My pressure canning pot.  Many years and several children ago, I used to can!  Not out of necessity, but for the rustic romance of it.  I remember being very disappointed with my initial results, and complaining to Susan that my canned green beans tasted disturbingly like canned green beans.  She said, And what, pray tell, did you expect them to taste like?

LB found my Morse code clicker with instruction booklet. I'm not expecting to be using my nascent coding abilities anytime soon, but this is Abel memorabilia, and... well, they aren't making any more of it. I blame part of my reluctance to finish unpacking on the fact that clicker and booklet had not yet been found, and, as odd as it sounds, I didn't want to know that they weren't in one of those final boxes. When LB came across this last night, my relief was palpable.

Also discovered recently were my capris length navy blue sweatpants with the baggy knees.  A minor find, but comforting, nonetheless.

I'd like to say all this has made my feel more at home, but there are still a few things around here that frighten me.  Case in point: several plants in the side-yard that I can't identify.  I know they're here on purpose, because we kept the same gardener as the home owners, and he has pruned around them but not removed them.  To me, they look very much like extra-terrestial dandelion heads emerging from one large alien pod.  I don't like seeing several things emerging from one thing (it's a good thing I never had twins), and this fear is at the root of my fear of opossum and echidnae.

As if the plant isn't scary enough all by itself, while I was leaning in to get a close-up, some sort of animal came darting out from behind the plants and ran right over my foot and I was wearing sandals at the time.  The animal was too heavy to have been a mouse or a chipmunk, but I felt distinctive rodent toenails scrambling across my instep.  I think it was a rabbit.  I let out the sort of scream one might save for being chased across a deserted parking structure in the dead of night, and my heart rate still has not returned to normal. 

Soon.

Settling In

This weekend was largely spent trying to become accustomed to our new home.  We're at that point where you're pretty much all unpacked, but you still feel like you're cooking in someone else's kitchen, using someone else's toilet, and waiting, on some semi-conscious level, to go back home where everything feels right.  I've compiled a small list of the items I can't find, the items I'm sure are keeping me from feeling like the true denizen of Northbrook that my credit card statements say I am.

1. Navy blue capri sweatpants.  Extremely unattractive and baggy-kneed, but comfy and sorely missed.

2. Small net used for catching aquatic frogs (and transferring them to a large pot while their tanks are being cleaned).

3.  Clover's heartworm medication.

4. Morse Code clicker.

5. Interior tier to Sabina's bookshelf.

There was more, but like my pair of NODJ pants, things have been turning up little by little.

The weekend began with Olive waiting patiently for her turn at LB's coffee (hot milk, cocoa powder, and sugar.  He claims there's coffee in it, too, but this will never be proven without assistance from NASA).

Discovering she gets to finish the bottom inch or two...

Yum!

Then we had guests: OFD, Mom, Lo and Brendy, and Aunt Marilyn.  There was a nosh prepared entirely by Elegance in Meats.  I've been there 7 times since we moved here, but the woman at the register has the good taste not to point this out.

Aunt Marilyn and Olive peruse the Wall Street Journal.

Four Perlmans, deep in thought.

Mom reading the Holy Binder--the daily log of Olive's adventures at Camp Apachi.

As often happens during these get-togethers, the camera is largely forgotten until it's time to study the Mapquest printout for directions back to Milwaukee.

After our guests had gone, I got out my new toy: a bag of roving this blogger convinced me to purchase.

Spinning with the drop-spindle is fun and satisfying.  The joy of releasing a small amount of the drafted wool and seeing the twist travel upward is an experience both new and eerily familiar.  My main complaint about spinning is that...I suck at it.  I worse than suck.  Despite my efforts to understand the half-hitch knot, the spindle often breaks free and agressively unravels its contents.  I can't decide if I should be spinning rightie or leftie--neither feels correct.  And worst of all, I'm not even sure I'm using my spindle right side up.  It doesn't match the drop-spindle in the book I'm using, with the hook being at the far end of the disc.  if you know about such things, please tell me.

Should it be like in the above picture:

or this one?

Despite my horrific, thick-and-thin results, I decided to take my little finished product very seriously, and did the whole back of the chair skeining thing,

...the hot water soak, and laying out to dry.

Then I wound it into a ball.  I think it looks like I made it in Spinner's Special Ed, but LB declared my results, "very anthroposophical." 

This is Steiner for, "Hopefully of deep spiritual value to you, because it would not survive in any competitive arena."  I'm going to hang onto it as a point of reference for measuring what will hopefully be progress.  Also, it'll come in handy if I ever want to knit myself one of these:

Progress

The trouble with moving every three years is that you get in the habit of always having 5 or 6 boxes which head straight to the garage, never to be opened or thrown out or even considered until the next move, when--if you're handling the move yourself--they head straight to the new garage.  But if at some point during those moves you graduate to hiring hunky young men to move the boxes for you, those self-same boxes sometimes find there way into the breakfast nook.  And when you open one, expecting to find that collection of plates with all your kids birthdates on them or maybe the white, tumeric-stained ladle, you come across this:

That's baby Daisy.  Look how sweet she is!  At first you're not sure because Sabina wore that little green dress, too, but this baby has two handies.  Remember that horrible wall-to-wall carpet?  Remember how baby gowns weren't popular then, and how happy you were to have this one instead of those boring onesies with the tedious snaps?  Everyone wore that green dress at some point, except Anatole, who was too big for it when he arrived.

And speaking of Tolie, look what else came out of the box!  Baby's first Green Card.  He was so fat upon arrival you suspected he'd been inflated instead of fed.  No hair gel required for that spikey 'do.

Here's baby Olive.  You put that teddy bear on the electrical cord to justify her faschination with the socket, but really, it was all about the cord.  With 20/20 hindsight, you like to refer to this unusual interest on her part as Clue #1.

It's a rude shock to tear into a box expecting a kitchen implement but instead finding yourself at Niagara Falls, Canada side, in 1986, with someone who is very much not LB.  How you two argued on that trip!  And how ill-suited you both were in your roles of driver and navigator!  Why couldn't you have just enjoyed being in your very early twenties, and did things that only people in their very early twenties can do: lift heavy boxes without getting winded comes to mind, for instance.  Or eat spicy food right before bed.  Sit down, stand up, sit down, with nary a perceptible change in heart rate.

LB and I have almost completely unpacked, shopped at IKEA, assembled two bar stools, a kitchen table, and a large bookshelf/curio cabinet with nary a disagreement or even a peevish remark.  Now that is something I could not have done in my early twenties.

First dinner in new house:

Gwendolyn and Cecily

A phone call from my sister Lo, the gist of which was, I'm tired of looking at that Bog Jacket! made it clear it's time for another post.  And I'd normally be happy to oblige, but three out of six Sullivans--the smallest three, in fact, the three least likely to make it to the toilet--are puking at regular intervals.  So this will be short; there's laundry to be done.

These two lovelies are LB's much-younger cousins, Theresa and Jessica.  They really are this happy.  They always look like they're bursting with the most amazing news to share, and they remind me, ever so slightly, of the Pigeon Sisters.

They also insisted on taking this picture, which--I think--may be the only one taken of this particular configuration of Sullivans, at this particular event.  I am very glad to have it.

Children and the Corn

On the last day of our vacation, we drove from Sea Ranch...

... to the South Bay to visit with my sister Lo and family. 

They have many unusual pets, and I've included photos of the less frightening ones below.

Bucket, of course, you know:

Tico the macaw:

and the turtle, whose name I forget:

I did not photograph Cuzco, Daphne, or Dharma, and certainly not Mary Kate the iguana, who is perhaps even skinnier and scary-eyed than her namesake.

Brendy was in charge of burgers and hot dogs.

Initially, I was responsible for the corn--AKA God's Vegetable.  I was relieved of duties, however, when it was determined that I was failing to meet appropriate benchmarks.  It may have been a result of my Corn Anxiety: the last time I ate God's Vegetable I ended up in God's Emergency Room.

Lo took over.

To see a few more photos of our afternoon, click on the photo of me taking a photo!

Sullivan/Pigman Wedding

Some preliminary pictures!  Click on the photo of Olive dancing with Great Uncle Mike to be led to my flickr page with more wedding photos:

There Will Be Perlmans (or No Country for Old Lederhosen)

On Saturday, Lo and the Folks came to visit for the day.  Sophie and Dieter Irma and Louie are of course, my parents, and Lo is my sister--for recent visitors to Knitters-Knitters.

There was some discussion of my Dad's socks.  Where had they come from?  Were they a gift, and if not, how did Mom let this happen? 

It turns out, he had purchased them to match his lederhosen.  They aren't true lederhosen--just vibrant green walking shorts which he wears with matching suspenders.  This led to rhapsodic musings on Dad's part about where those shorts might be now, and how they should be reincorporated back into his repertoire.  Dissent ensued.

Like most big sisters, Lo has things to teach me.  I now know that pantyhose are out, outre, over, and that short girls like us should not wear sandals with an ankle strap.  Spanx are only for women with a very little amount of bulge to cover, unless one wants to reduce blood flow to the internal organs, and that the pants for women who don't want to bare their midriff nor wear the dreaded Mom Jean?  They exist.

Lo knows how to play the piano, and how to teach the piano.  There are people who go white water rafting and bungee jumping to achieve the level of exhilaration Olive experienced. 

A Simple Thin'

Happy Mother's Day, SM!

Home

Last week, Olive had Friday and Monday off from school, so we all went to Milwaukee for the long weekend.  There, we performed many sacred rituals and rites of passage.

For example, the ice cream sundae tradition.  No serving is complete without a dramatic flourish of Redi Whip.

Olive watched the preliminaries from her high chair, but then decided to become more directly involved.

We celebrated Mom's birthday, marking the occasion with the gift of Embossed Leaf Socks.

The next day, we went to Claire's accessory shop in the Bayshore mall, where Sabina had her ears pierced several years prior.

Agatha was a bit apprehensive...

...but Daisy maintained her usual calm.

An unusual elderly gentleman hovered in the background during the piecing.

He pretended not to notice us, but insisted on paying for everyone's ears.

In an attempt to shield him from the paparazzi, we brought him home with us.

He knows a lot of stories.

Sullivans in Action

Today, we work on Olive's application to private school. I have completed easier paperwork, like the INS forms for international adoption, applications to graduate school, and summary dissolution in the State of California. 

At any rate, Olive finds it tedious...

...and has an idea for an appropriate diversion.  Snacks!

The school requires a recent photo of the applicant.  Several photos came out well, but didn't seem appropriate for inclusion.  Huggers-Huggers, for example.

And this one, which reminds me of one taken of my mom on her honeymoon.

Here are some of the ones under consideration.  Feel free to influence our decision!

One:

Two:

Three:

Four:

Five:

And...no thanks to the Yarn Store Lady, I am Magic Looping with ease.  It probably goes without saying; that's LB's foot.