Delusional Knitting Season

A mere sampling of the Christmas yarn.

As recently as two weeks ago, I was swearing up and down that I would not be doing any Christmas knitting this year because, in case I haven't mentioned it recently, I HAVE THREE JOBS and do not have time for deadline knitting. So imagine my surprise when I made my Christmas list and realized that it contains seven knitting projects. In fact, all it contains is knitting projects. Because my family won't know I love them unless I swath them in vast fields of stockinette. Apparently.

The thing is, I have looked at a calendar. I realize that to make this work I have to accomplish one project a week for the next seven weeks, which might be asking a little bit much of a person who spent three months this summer making a pair of plain stockinette socks.

And speaking of socks (and I don't want to get into specifics here because, let's be honest, 93% of the people reading this are actually on the Christmas list), five of the eight projects--yes, eight, I just thought of one more--anyway, five of the eight projects are socks or sock-related. Those come in pairs. If you don't understand why that's relevant, you aren't allowed to talk to me until at least February 2012.

So. I've looked at the calendar. I've looked at the list. I understand the relationship of the calendar to the list. But I still think everything will be just fine.

Silver Linings

My car window broke last Thursday, Edgar the Cat had to go in for some bloodwork on Friday, and this morning, after two days sitting in the garage, my car battery was dead. So I sat at the mechanic's for the entire morning, and I decided to spend part of the time making a mental list of silver linings. Some are kind of more like pewter, but I'll take what I can get. 

1. Edgar's very expensive bloodwork results came back. For a 15-year-old cat, he's remarkably healthy. Apparently appropriate litter habits just become irrelevant to cats of a certain age. So . . . yay?

2. I spent so much time at the mechanic's that I got an entire stack of papers graded and about 1/3 of a foot knitted. Believe me when I tell you that I needed the knitting time. Yay!

3. I got to listen to an unintentionally entertaining fellow customer explain how he has come up with a mathematical theory that will break any and all codes, like "the Internet code." Something to do with prime numbers. Luckily he was talking to another customer, so I didn't have to even pretend to try to understand. 

4. Since the same car window had the same problem and was repaired just two years ago, the mechanic wrote off the labor and only charged me for the crappy part, which he claims has been improved since then. So after window repair, new battery, and an oil change just for the hell of it, I got out of there for only $380 instead of $550. I still need a new valve cover or some such shit that will cost another $120, but that doesn't have to be repaired immediately. Yay?

5. I've worked out a really fabulous justification for how my crappiest of all crappy Monday mornings warrants an afternoon nap before I have to teach tonight. Yay!

Why, Thank You!

I think it's beautiful, too. Thank you so much for noticing!

Maybe someday Twist will offer a class in how to be a humble knitter. But I won't take it because

I AM AWESOME.

Yeah. I've got this.

So . . . what's next?  

Grammy Knitting

My grandmother, RoJean Erwin Holem, passed away in 2004, but if she were around today, there would be a few things she'd want you to know: Among other things, she was a registered nurse at Susan B. Allan Memorial Hospital who proudly wore her uniform until the day she retired--none of these "scrubs," thankyouverymuch. She was a member of the Susannah French Putney chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (whether that's much to be proud of we can cover another time). She drew all her own greeting cards. She enjoyed writing and won several Jessie Perry Stratford awards from the Butler County Historical Society for her stories about El Dorado's history. And her granddaughter called her "Grammy," not "graaaanmaaa" (pronounced in a derisive, gravely whine that really can't be reproduced in print). 

She was also a talented knitter. I'd love to tell you that my own knitting habit was inspired by her, but it wasn't. I remember watching Grammy knit when I was a kid and thinking, "How boring." Sometime around age 8 or 9, I demanded that I be taught to knit, and Grammy and my mom managed together to teach me the knit stitch, but after producing a 3-inch blob of blue yarn and confirming that knitting was, indeed, boring, I went back to my books and didn't pick up needles again until I was 28 or so. And the knitting I do now bears little resemblance to her knitting, at least as I remember it. The only garment she ever knitted for me was a purple sweater vest done in what I now know is garter stitch. I wore it one time, for my fourth-grade class picture, and it was retired, never to be seen again. She certainly didn't churn out brightly colored socks the way I do, much less carry them around in her purse to be worked whenever she had to wait more than three minutes. (She should have. Patience wasn't her strong suit. Knitting would've helped.)

So when I'm knitting, I'm not really thinking about Grammy. But that's about to change, because I am about to dive into "Grammy Knitting" in a big, big way. The occasional wretched sweater vest aside, most of Grammy's projects were Christmas stockings. Every baby born in our family and in the families of close friends, dating from my mother's cousin Dwight in 1944 and Mom herself in 1948, received a handknit Christmas stocking personalized with the baby's name and birth date. She also made them for new spouses and for Lord's Acre fundraising sales at the Methodist Church. The last stocking went to Dwight's grandson, Braden, in 1993; after that her arthritis was too painful to knit anymore. I tried to get Mom to estimate the number of stockings Grammy made during all those years; Mom refuses to make the attempt. Personally, I think it's a safe bet that she easily made more than 100.

Notice that Mom's stocking is longer than mine. After making Dwight's and Mom's stockings, she started making them shorter so that it wouldn't take so much to fill.

These stockings were such a fact of life in our family that I remember being appalled when I realized that not everyone had a handknit Christmas stocking. Lots of people's stockings didn't even have their names on them. Some of them were--gasp--store bought! To this day I feel an instinctive twinge of pity when I go to a friend's home and see bland, anonymous Christmas stockings, and I feel terrible that none of our new family members since 1993 have received their own stockings.

Well, family, we're gonna fix that. I've been wanting to learn colorwork for a while, and Twist Yarn Shop has a colorwork class starting this weekend that uses Christmas stockings as the sample project. The pattern even uses some of the same designs Grammy used, like the girl and boy characters on my stocking and Mom's. Christmas stockings will shortly be pouring off my needles.

I just ask one favor: I've got a lot of catching up to do, and I don't knit nearly as fast as Grammy did. Please procreate slowly.

Dogs and Yarn

When I started writing this blog, I assumed I would have insightful things to say about politics and religion. But I've been going through old entries, and it turns out I only talk about dogs and yarn. Yarn and dogs. yarndogsyarncatsdogsyarndogs.

"Why?" I ask myself. "Don't I have anything relevant to contribute to the contentious issues of the day?"

"No," I answer myself. "Contentiousness is overrated."

Politics are frustrating. I keep working and volunteering for the causes and changes I believe in, but I can't afford the emotional energy it would take to argue about it every day. I find that the harder I work, the less interested I am in talking about it.

I love a good theological discussion, but those are better left to face-to-face conversations, right? I don't give a good gd whether you believe the same thing I believe as long as you leave me alone to believe it. I do, however, care deeply about convincing you to treat your pets well and that the superior drape of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool is well worth the extra expense.

So. Dogs. Yarn. The occasional cat, and possibly a sunflower or two.

Whether you read me because you're interested in dogs and/or yarn, or because you're my friend and you're interested in what's going on in my little world, or because you're a student of psychiatry and you're using me as a class project (see aforementioned example of my tendency to talk to myself), it is what it is and this is what it is. 

Me. Not Weird.

I've been celebrating fall mainly because I get to wear my handknit socks again. I even publicly congratulated my pink Monkeys for being the first out of the drawer in fall 2011. 

Way to go, Monkeys!

I have to admit I was feeling a little weird about this, until I hopped on over to Knitting to Stay Sane. Most of the post is about steeking, which is intentionally cutting up something you have just knit. Intentionally. But at the very end she gets all excited about wearing socks. Just like me. So, me. Not weird. In that particular way.