It came...

I waited all week for the mail; living in the country is marvelous but having to wait twice as long for packages can be killer. Having placed the order on Sunday, I knew it would be a long time coming, but I didn't care. I was too sick to go to the yarn store at that point, and all I wanted was a fix.

Finally, though, as I sat on the couch today, right after my last post, working on a sock, the doorbell rang. I rushed over, soothed Darcy (the pup), and took the package, a slim brown envelope. I knew what it had to be.

Lace Style, edited by Pam Allen and Ann Budd, containing the pattern for my Lacy tank top, the Essential Tank.

I had purchased the yarn on Wednesday, denim-colored Misti Alpaca lace weight. The pattern called for the yarn to be doubled, so I bought seven skeins. They waited on the top of the stash...

But no longer. I cast on this afternoon, right as Dad pulled into the driveway following a week long trip to Colorado where he hiked in the mountains and attended his sister's graduation ceremony.

I was lucky enough to get gauge right away--I cast on with a size seven needle instead of a size six, my tension is so tight that I always start with one size larger and then move up or down if needed.










Sorry the pictures are blurred, I did the best I could with my hopeless camera...











Unfortunately, the needles I have in a size seven are as dull as all get out--inadvisable with a fine yarn and a lace pattern, especially with my tension. I've fallen in love with Addi Lace needles, so I am dragging the corpse to Warsaw tomorrow to visit The Shuttle Shop [This isn't their page--they aren't online, but it has a good description of what the shop has and other LYS in Indiana, which is great to have], where I hope Kathy can hook me up with a pair.

I bought a size four pair when Addi first released these beautiful implements, and I fell right in love with them. They are sharp enough and lack the slippery coating that would cause dropped stitches when working with a lace weight yarn. Also, and I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, they have a distinctive smell of pennies.

This makes me think of Dad.

As a child, Dad worked at CMI, Wabash Cast Aluminum. Every day, when he came home from work, smelling of molten steel and covered in bits of tiny metal that gleamed in his hair and rained down onto the carpet as he pulled off his work boots, he would empty out his pockets of his wallet, his pocketknife, and his change before going into the basement for his shower. He put these items into his Work Basket, on the top of the refrigerator. The basket held bills, coins, and the bullet that ricochet up and hit Dad in the bum when he went hunting and had a friend that forgot gun safety.

When the basket became too heavy, Dad would pull it down and thump it onto the dining room table after dinner. Paul and I would then crawl up onto the dining room chairs and kneel on them, leaning over the table, and seperate out all the pennies from the nickels, dimes, and quarters. Then we would pour the silver into the basket again along with the bullet and the envelopes. Paul and I could keep the pennies; we would count them and put them in careful piles of ten each before dividing them evenly between our two piggie banks.

The smell of Addi Lace needles reminds me of all that.

Finally!

I am a tall and skinny girl. For my skinny-ness, I am a very tall girl. AND I am long waisted.

As you can imagine, this makes jean shopping dissolve me into uncontrolled sobbing or leaves me hating myself and my appearence more than I can ever explain without seeming incredibly arrogant to all of you. Stated simply: no one can be shaped any way other than "average" and buy jeans in this country.

Some people still think you have to look like a model to shop without pain. That isn't true either. I have been accused of being statuesque, even model-like in shape (we won't touch on appearance, that would ruin the mood and make me cry again). No, in this country with our expainding waist (and every other) lines, you have to be at least four inches or more shorter than me to be as thin as I am (which they believe is a child size) and at least thirty pounds heavier in order to get jeans as tall as I am.

Maybe if I was willing to buy five-hundred dollar jeans, this would be different. But I, hardened by the hell of jeans shopping, still will not pass the hundred-dollar mark.

I spend hours at The Buckle looking for jeans that fit. When I finally find them long enough that fit in the waist, it doesn't matter what style I am buying, I just go for it. So even though I would kill for a real pair of "skinny" jeans with their long, straight legs, I must buy huge flares which embarrass me simply because they fit.

Buying jeans is painful for me, it is even worse for my 30" 36" brother.

We had both given up hope. Then I was reading Grumperina, and I saw a link for True Jeans.

Jennifer, check this place out.

They take your measurements, your body type, your height and weight, and compute what fits of what jean brand will fit you best of all. This service would work even better for me if I was willing to spend as much for jeans as an i-Pod, but it still lists hundreds of pairs of jeans for me and doesn't crowd the site with pairs that won't fit me.

They have skinny jeans. Boot-cut. Capris.

This place is amazing. I didn't cry once. They even have little stars that tell you just how good the fit will be. And for cheap girls like me, they let you sort by price.

This might sound like an advertisement and maybe it is, but I have to tell you, these people deserve one.

Toe up

I'm trying to be a dedicated sock knitter.

It is my goal to try everything and anything, to make certain that I have mastered the art of the knitted sock. I want to be able to pick up any pattern at any time and knit it; I want to take whatever tools are at my disposal and use them, no matter if they are double pointed needles, circular needles, or herbs and a spell book.

I've read Cat Bordhi's books on the circular needle fad, I've tried that. I'm not a fan. But that's okay! I can forgive myself for my lack of enthusiasm there, the reason is simple. I want to recapture with knitting what has been lost in our Wal-mart culture. I honestly believe that we shouldn't take for granted the fact that we can run out and buy socks five for a dollar, I want to understand that there was effort put into their construction, that someone worked to give me these socks.

I also want to be able to remember, every time I pick up my yarn, the fact that my grandmother knitted socks for her whole family doing the exact same thing I am doing right now. She turned the heels. That was her thing. No one else in the family could turn heels as well as Gran. Although she died before she had the chance to see me knit a sock, turn a heel, graft a toe, I know she would have been proud. The torch was passed. Honestly, that history alone makes me incapable of giving up my DPNs.

As I flipped through the new IK, I read an article on toe up socks, where instead of starting with the leg, turning the heel, knitting the foot, and grafting the toe, you cast on, knit the foot, the heel, the leg, then cast off.

How freaky is that?

My first thought was that this idea would just be wrong. Then I thought it would look ugly. Then, I decided it had to be done.

I cast on. I made myself a toe. I turned the heel, I worked up the leg. Let me tell you what: it looks exactly the same.

But still, I am not a fan. I am a traditionalist. I have the way I make socks, and that is not going to change barring the advent of new, sturdy, non-warping wooden DPNs that won't stab me when I trip and fall on them and still is sharp enough to do lacework.

A fish out of water

Asthma is the most uncomfortable thing I have ever been diagnosed with, and I have been diagnosed with a lot of stuff.

I thought endometriosis was the worst, but even having major surgery was a walk in the park compared to sitting all day on the couch, straining to pull air into my seriously deflated lungs.

I can't concentrate, I can't read, knit, or even really sleep. It is like all those dreams I have had for the last year of being smothered are coming true in real life, and this is not a fun experience for me.

I went to the doctor again yesterday and left with more drugs than Woodstock. He said this treatment would keep what I call The Alien Baby from trying to burst out of my chest as I work on making myself a nice, Laura-shaped dent in the sofa cushions. I hope so.

In the meantime, I have been shopping online. I have been fiddling with little mini-projects, like learning to cast on for the toe of a sock using the Eastern Method in the new summer 2007 IK. I think it would have been pretty funny to watch, I've never grumbled quite as much as while working with four needles and eight stitches.

Now that I am feeling just a tad better, today (I'm off the medicine that made The Alien Baby grow) I am about to start on the massive stack of papers I need to write for all the classes I have been neglecting.

I have to:

1. Write a lesson plan
2. Write a paper on my field experience
3. Write an essay about ethical journalism (which I doubt really exists)
4. Read a bunch of chapters in varied texts in preparation for the finals which are...next week
5. Think thoughts to foster healing which will allow survival through the next week and beyond

Wish me luck.

Welcome Home Laura

Ahh, to post from home again.

I had so many problems with my old site, I had to trash it and move forward in any way I could. Now, I am here, with all my quirks and obsessions, for the convenience of those friends who like me well enough to drop by and visit.

I have been reassured that this program is mac-friendly, which I appreciate.

I also must say, the spell check is a nice touch.

I will be re-posting blogs from my old site as time goes by, but I first wanted to put something up so I could look at my crappy monitor as it frizzles away and think, "I did something this afternoon after my doctor's appointment."

It also will allow me to forget that the book I ordered, Lace Style, edited by Pam Allen, has not yet arrived and may not for several days. And that I don't already have the yarn for the first project I plan to begin from said book. And that I don't have the first ball wound double stranded. And that I didn't find enough stitch markers and place them in the basket. And that I didn't find needles in all the right sizes.

So this is like, a distraction. Or something.

It only has to last for about another fifteen minutes, though, because then I head off to the Manchester College Knitting Circle's weekly meeting. My health has been horrible, I have been confined to bed, but I refuse to miss a meeting.

Look for pictures, older posts, and more entertainment as time goes by...

The Nose Knows

I hate my nose.

Not the way it looks, the way it works. It seems to me that at all moments, there is something or other going catastrophically wrong with that organ.

It began in my childhood, with me sleeping on one side, then the other, in order to ensure that I had at least one working nostril. Thus able to partially breathe, I would drift off into a fitful sleep peppered with villainous individuals attempting to smother me with varied objects.

My mother would try to help. She would give me hot, boiling bowls of water, have me l
ean over them, then drape a towel over my head in order to trap the steam and allow me to breathe it.

Bless her, this only made the problem worse. I was forced to gasp like a fish for air as my nose closed further and further off.

I would salvage pillows from all corners of my home, making a kind of ramp for my back and head which would keep me sleeping in a sitting position. For years, I would awake wondering why I could not find the air in my room, only to realize that Mom, in her infinite kindness, had thought I was uncomfortable and had removed the additional pillows.

Later, as time went by, I began treating my allergies with an array of noxious chemicals, none of which had any effect.

I did amateur duct work to prevent heat from entering my room, and had many arguments with Dad about the open window I left in my room in the dead of winter. I was allergic to the dust and mildew in the vents, and the heat kept my nose blocked off completely.

Then I made an excessively expensive purchase of a humidifier, which I used to fill my room with enough humidity to keep my throat from closing off when the heat went on, which would consequently prevent me from sleeping or kill me.

I tried more noxious chemicals. I threw out all my scented belongings, then my mom's, then my dad's. I selected the laundry soap, the dish soap, the candles, the shampoo.

After 22 years of struggling, I finally resorted to the only treatment that yeilded any results, regardless of the consequences. I became a chronic user of nasal spray. I admit I am addicted, but what can be wrong about finally being able to draw an unhindered breath?

All day I have been without this glorious compound, and I am in the worst pain imaginable. I feel like my head is in a vice. I know, that in exactly thirty minutes, I will speed to CVS to get my fix. I will tear open the cardboard, rip away the plastic safety seal, prime the pump, then give myself the sweet relief I long for. Then, breathing deeply, I will drive home.

We have vaccines for polio, smallpox, cures for the plague, treatments for cancer and malaria. Why then, does no one think to create some kind of working solution for people like me, with no relief from chronic allergies?

Places Like This Make Holy People Go Blind

There is a jazz bar near Aimee's house.

This was where we, the cool, the adult, the mature post-college and college students would go on our visit to Michiana. We would have a Night Out. There would be Music. Not just Music, but Jazz.

Aimee, being the kind, sweet, innocent young woman that she is, was concerned.

"Are you sure this will be okay?" she asked for the sixteenth time as we entered her mother's car (her own being far too filled with the Essentials of Commuting to support THREE WHOLE people. If you are a commuter student, you will understand). "I don't want you guys to be uncomfortable..."

We, Jennifer and I, assured her we certainly had seen far worse in Peru alone, nothing else could shock us. We shared horror stories from Miami County, complete with bathrooms too filthy and potentially hazardous for Roman to allow us to enter. Rooms with smoke so thick, one could not find the bar, let alone order, and places where the bartenders needed help knowing what alcohol went into what drink, since they were only ever asked for beer.

Aimee was not consoled.

She was certain this place, Phoenix-something, as she told us, would be nicer than that piano bar, Rumrunners, which had horrified her on her 21st birthday. This place, recommended by her father and several other companions, was bound to be (as she said) "classy."

This was hard for my Aimee. She goes to Bethel. She could be lynched or burned as a witch, for even being seen with Jennifer and I, who by Bethel's standards were so evil that the sun flinched away from us during the daylight and clouds covered the moon when we ventured out that night. So horrible among women that our red-tinted eyes lit the city streets as we...danced.

Bethel is heating the pyre for Aimee.

We have decided to meet at the Skin Pit. Maybe Hell can finally deal with some of our incurable lesions, which some refer to as zits.

The bar had a guy, a nice guy, checking ID when we entered. He was the same age as my father, and a poor excuse for a bouncer. His arms were as skinny as mine, and he looked about as mean as the guy at my church who makes sure to shake everyone's hands before they leave.
He was the best part of that bar. We should have sat by him, talked to him, and gotten to know him, seeing as he was the only part of The Phoenix which was, well, savory. Bless him.
We found a seat in the corner by an old and unused piano. Aimee and Jen began to discuss the wimpyness of Bethel music students. They don't know their keys, can't transpose, and many other things. Aimee reported that she is planning on telling potential employers that she took her music classes at Manchester.

And, Dad, remember? You wanted me to visit Bethel? Apply there?

In your face.

Then the band came out.

This is where things get a little freaky.

This is where the fifty and sixty year old band members take the chair-lift up onto the stage so their hips won't give out, pull up their pants and hold them there as they sing, and begin the music.

The singing prompted my friend Jennifer, who knows the music these men were singing (better, even, than those who were singing it), to being her commentary.

"TOM PETTY!" she would cry at the end of each song, pulled from the late fifties, and sixties. "FREEBIRD!!!!!"

Soon she realized these men had removed their hearing aids before the show and began to simply mutter: "Sing it right..." followed by an outcry of, "IF YOU ARE GOING TO HARMONIZE, DO IT RIGHT!" while screaming in my ear, "HE ISN'T A THIRD ABOVE!"
This meant something to poor Jen.

In the meantime, the drunks had staggered off their bar stools, pushed away their more-sober friends, and waddled out onto the dance floor. While the lead singer used his elbows to secure his pants as he grasped the microphone, my personal hero, Mrs. Mom Jeans, reeled onto the floor.
Now she might have been Ms. Mom Jeans, I don't know.

Either way, she had affection for her partner. Great affection.

Her spindly hands reached, down, down, to her dance partners buttocks. She grasped, and kneaded her target like bread dough, possibly attesting to the age of the man in question and its effect on the elasticity of his skin.

At first I did not realize what I was seeing, thinking that it must have been some kind of optical illusion. But when other inebriated, staggering grandparents drug themselves onto the floor, I knew.

I had a friend. He bent towards me from his table, continuously asking if I could see the stage. He seemed to think that the lead singers profuse sweating had drawn me to this bar, or that I would fall helplessly into drunken admiration with him (impossible, since I had no noxious liquid clenched in my hands).

"Can you see?" he yelled at me, followed by several gestures and mouth movement that may have been an indicator of continued speech.

"What?!" I shouted back.

"Yeah!" he said, then staggered away.

Meanwhile, the throng of dancers was growing. A moderately young woman was on the floor, bumping and grinding in a way that did not befit her rapidly decaying joints. As if the physical contact was not enough to convince her dance partner to take her home with him, now, she began to draw him to her with the allure that only someone with a fifth of Jack Daniels coursing through their bloodstreams can, by prying her shirt from her ample muhoogilas, thrusting them in the direction of her partner, and displaying her camisole, which was not fufilling its duty.

At this point, Aimee had paled. She begged me to tell her if I was offended. I was laughing too hard to answer. My response was only to scrawl on a fragment of notebook paper a sketch of myself, blind, led by my dog on another visit to Aimee's.

Underneath, I wrote carefully, neatly in the half-light: "It's things like this that make holy people go blind."