A mix, Good, Very Good and Not So Much

Many things running through my mind today.  Little energy.  Will abbreviate.  

1.  New Mystery Stole swatch on US Size 2 needles.  Like it much better.  Really like the orange beads.  Or maybe the purple.  Must decide before Friday.  

2.  Sonar X3 is super cute.  This is the SuperCowboy ensemble, made from some old suedy polyester fabric with McCall’s 8398, copyright 1966 (Batman, Robin and Superman official Costumes).  Made for a family friend’s Cowboy fifth birthday.  She and her folks loved it. 

3.  We’re sick.  Ok, four out of five of us are sick, including me and all of the small people.  Right now it’s general malaise, sore throat and ache ache ache.  I’m hoping we can kick it with a low-key long weekend.  

4.  Go make this Malted Milk Ice Cream.  It’ll mess up a lot of dishes, but it’s so worth it.  So so worth it.  

5.  Deployment socks are progressing slowly, but progressing.  Thinking of a modification of this Pink Lemon Twist pattern in the foot area.  With red and yellow.  Or maybe blue and grey.  Or something.  

6.  I found the major speeches of the Democratic National Convention very stirring, particularly the focus on families.  I find John McCain’s VP choice profoundly troubling.  Inexperience, energy policy, family rights.  Very troubling.  

7.  There’s a meteorological par-tay happening in the tropics.  Gustav.  Hanna.  And a couple of “pre-” storms here and here.  I have something to say about the storm name choices this year.  But I’m not sure what it is yet.  We look to be on the safe side of the named monsters at least.  Check on your friends in Louisiana.  It’s going to be a bad scene for them.  Again.  

First Day

Do they look ready?  

Our lives have long run by a seasonal clock, driven by the turning of the school year.  First as chronic students, and then as perpetrators of education, both higher and public, in three states, our lives have always ebbed and flowed semester by semester, graduation by graduation, summer break by summer break.  

In legend and lore, the return to school happens at the end of summer, as nature begins to reach toward fall.  The heat of the summer has passed.  The air is crisp and refreshing.  The leaves are beginning to hint that they might be ready to change color.  I know this because the advertisements for Back to School show shiny-faced young people wearing long pants and sweaters over their cute little t-shirts.  (And has anyone noticed the vests and the bubble dresses and the leggings this year?  It’s like I’m thirteen all over again)

This is not the reality in our world.  We have counted down to the end of summer vacation through the hottest, most stifling time of year for Coastal Texas.  The sea breeze that keeps things bearable the rest of the year often dies for a while in August.  The cooler temperatures during the recent rains, give way to a muggy sauna when the clouds pass.  Even the suggestion of a pair of long pants, let along a jaunty sweater over a scoop-neck T makes me want to melt into a puddle on the spot.  

But it’s time.  

Even without those advertisements and the mountains of school supplies in the aisles, I’d know.

  

I have this (rare) urge to clean the house.  To sweep out the remains of last year’s graduation and prom and football season and second grade.  To turn out the scraps of old lessons and homework.  To gather up the nubs of crayon and let the Sonars turn them into some kind of wax sculpture that will still draw.  Some people have this urge in springtime, I know.  Which, in a place where you’re packed into your house against the cold for several months out of the year, makes sense.  But here, where most of the winter sees us with the doors open wide, running around in our shirt sleeves, the jaunty cardigan slung over the back of the chair just in case, the Springtime just doesn’t feel like a huge shift from what came before.  

Whether it’s coming in August or September, whether I’m in Pennsylvania or South Texas or Southern New Mexico, the start of the school year just seems to be programmed into my blood.  Even before the high school football players start practicing in pads rather than t-shirts, or the marching band starts marching AND playing at the same time, I know it’s coming.  Partner is still in the educational business of course, but I’ve been out of it for the past five years or so.  Just when I thought maybe I’d recover from the pull of the school schedule though, my kids started getting big enough to be school players.  

This year, that’s ‘kids,’ plural.  Both Sonar X8 and Sonar X5 will be attending school.  Their clothes for tomorrow are hanging on the ends of their beds.  They’re tucked in (not sleeping) with butterflies about tomorrow.  

I have butterflies too.  :)

MS4 Swatch, Beads Revisited, and K'nex Swift

It’s a lovely rainy afternoon here, so of course, I’m knitting.  

Here is a photo of my MS4 swatch on US size 4 needles.  KnitPicks Gloss Lace Yarn in Celery, with assorted beads.  I’m not thrilled with the stitch definition, so I’m going to re-swatch with US size 2 needles and whatever the new favorite color of beads turns out to be.  Lemme know what you like.

I wasn’t sure where to put the beads for best effect in the pattern, so I just scattered some around.  To the far left is a handful of (juicy) Cranberry beads, then a few Green, then the Yellow (which are totally lost in the lace, and is now out of contention) and then an inch bead-free.  To the right of the swatch is a length of yarn with a few other bead color choices strung on it.  At the top is Blue-Green, which looks blue on the yarn.  Then Orange, Purple, Pink, and Glossy Coral.  We are all liking the Purple and the Orange.  

A smidge bigger.  

Below is the beginning of the Lace Ribbon Scarf from Spring Knitty.  I know this one wasn’t in the plan released earlier this summer, but that just goes to show I’m not very good at sticking to my directives.  I can’t recall what the yarn is and can’t find the ball band.  It is the remainder of the yarn I used on last year’s Mystery Stole.  

And here in this final picture for today, is the result of our collaborative creativity the past few rainy afternoons.  Because I need very little incentive to break out the K’nex and I found this page and this page, which employ K’nex and Tinker Toys to create inexpensive swifts and ball winders for knitters who are either cheap (like me) or only occasionally need to wind a hank into a ball (also like me).  This is the Yarn Swift Sonar X5 and I put together.  We modified liberally.  If anyone would like step-by-step instructions, let me know.  

The ball winder is still in the prototype stage.  Sonar X8 will get back to you on it.  

And yes, yes YES! I finished all three of the Stealth projects I had slated to knit during the Olympics.  They make a funny little set and I will photograph them to share later.  

Now back to the Deployment Socks.  

Pinky

Could it be that you’re 43 today?  

I once called you Old Man, but now I think it may really be true.  ;)

Happy Birthday Babe.

P.S. Yes, that is the finished Hacky Sack Hoodie on Partner.  I have pictures of the whole sweater, but I just love this picture of his hands.    

My Weirdness This Week, and Shaun Tan's Gem

My toe is sore today.  Actually it’s been sore for a couple of days because I dropped a glass on it the other night.  I knew it the moment I set the glass down on the corner of my desk.  Actually thought to myself, ‘Don’t put it there.  You’ll knock it over.’  Pah on that inner voice.  I set the glass on the corner of my desk so that I could close the curtain to the right, and turn on the lamp to the left.  As I simultaneously pulled my hand gracefully away from the lamp switch and started to sit down in my chair, I caught the top edge of the glass with my hand and tipped it toward myself.  The contents of the glass splattered first against me (spraying in a sort of arc behind me), then after the glass hit my foot, it spun and sprayed more liquid around in front of me, before bouncing onto the tile and breaking.  

While I screamed ow ow ow ow standing in a glassy puddle on one foot, my lovely Partner got towels and brooms and ice.  I’ll be fine.  It was actually sort of funny.  Did I mention that it was a glass of wine?  Wine that I’d taken barely a sip out of before the spectacular spraying of wine all over the room?  Did I mention that it miraculously missed the computer on its track to soak the tile as well as a towel that has been wedged under the thousand-pound filing cabinet for the last year to keep the metal cabinet from scraping the tile?  Or that there is no way to remove this towel from under the cabinet without emptying the files out of it?  

The living room now has the lingering aroma (thankfully pleasant) of a 2005 Australian Shiraz Cabernet that I really liked and was disappointed to have dropped on my foot.  

Perhaps the fumes led to the next weirdness, which was measuring out a level teaspoon of salt to put in my tea yesterday morning.  No, I realized my mistake before I drank the tea, thank you very much.  

All of this should not, however, cause you to doubt my next enthusiastic endorsement.  We came across Shaun Tan’s The Arrival in the juvenile fiction section of the library last week.  I guess you’d call it a graphic novel, in that there are no words, only pictures.  Don’t assume though that the pictures and its location in the library make it kids’ stuff.  The word that comes to my lips anytime I try to describe it is ‘beautiful.’  

The Arrival tells the story of one man’s journey from his home country to make a new life, first for himself, and later for his family in a magical fictionalized world.  Each page, each panel is filled with magic.  You will choke up when the main character holds the hands of his wife and daughter before boarding the boat.  You will understand the awe, the frustration, the loneliness, the fear, the hope that immigrants must have felt when stepping off the boat at Ellis Island more than a century ago.  The pages are filled with fantastical elements meant to illustrate the foreignness, the exoticness, the seeming magic of this new place.  Also embedded in the pages is the generosity of the shared immigrant experience, the way in which one person helps another through the initial confusion, how each person has a different story that led him or her to this place at this time.  The pictures are shaped with subtle details, small beauties and wonders that you will linger over.  

While perfectly appropriate for young people, it should not be overlooked by adults, who will understand the complex choices we sometimes make to care for our families, who might see reflected, if not one’s own experience, then perhaps that of a parent or grandparent.  A great book to share in any language.

If you enjoyed The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, you’ll love this book.  (And if you’ve never read The Invention of Hugo Cabret, you should go find that one too.)