The Bride

   I must admit that it is really hard to maintain a knitting blog when my major project has been flying stealth since I cast on.   The person I'm making it for is tremendously special to me and I wish I had the stones to design her gift personally, but I will have to content myself with altering the pattern in a meaningful way.   There is a longstanding tradition among knitters to create, even personally design, for the milestone days of those we love.   If you are lucky enough to be in the charmed circle of love around a serious knitter, just buckle up and prepare to see what they can do.   Allow me, instead of displaying her knits, to introduce you to the Recipient.

   The Bride is one of the people that most consistently amazes me.   We met in the lounge at the medical school dormitory the day I moved in, both of us trying to understand just what it was we were about to take on.   It turns out that she should never have worried even for a moment.   This tiny little person with a huge personality balanced by quiet calm in the face of ridiculous pressure can do fairly literally anything.   She has far more capacity for learning than I thought was possible in a human being, and she pushed her friends to learn more and faster than we thought ourselves capable of (Work! *kshh* work!).   She found her passion in surgery, and she is perfect for it, being uniquely capable of calmly learning while attendings scream and long long days slip by.   When I picture her, it is with the gleam of satisfaction in her eye that she had when she got to close the wound those times in third year.

    I chose to attend my medical school, a well-known private school in the Midwest, in part in order to meet different people with different life experiences, and The Bride was just that...a person whose life could hardly have been more different than mine.   She grew up on the other side of the world, and the bits and pieces she let slip about her early life indicated no bed of roses.  California and UC Berkeley shaped her college life, and she always had stories to share about living in a commune, especially about the people she had met.   I eagerly sought out her stories, though she may never have known that I did, because her life was far more fascinating than she realized.   She didn't share everything, being an intensely private person, so what she did share with her closest friends were like little jewels.   We didn't always know when she was dating someone, but she seemed to seek out those whose lives were as outside-the-box and rich with experiences as her own.  

   Several times throughout the four years, the Bride shared with me the rituals of her Jewish faith.   She even referred to me as "Honorary Jew" for being one of the most reliable about accompanying her to services and for being curious enough about her faith and culture to learn more.   She did not attend weekly services and would never have thought of herself as devout, but like all Jewish people, she had decided what Judaism meant to her, and she maintained many traditions, deeply committed to keeping this part of her identity shining.   She wears her faith proudly, perhaps nudged on by the thought of relatives and ancestors who were not allowed to.  

   When we, her girlfriends, were about to meet the man who is now her fiancé, our first thought was of whether or not this person would be her match, would measure up to her.   We had seen her choose people that, while nice and funny and interesting, were unable to match her in wit, in brilliance, in energy, in ambition.   The moment we met this charming, funny, sophisticated lawyer who kept pace with her in every way, we just knew. To lovingly embarrass her a bit, one of us began to refer to him as "Captain Awesome."   He shares her faith, is not intimidated by any little bit of her awesome, and is her match...we are proud to watch her begin a life with him.  

   Now that I have said all this, I expect to receive a mostly-angry email or phone call from her when she has read it.   She has always acted supremely uncomfortable with anyone publicly saying good things about her.   I hope she knows that I wrote it because it is true. I hope she knows that this is exactly how we feel about her and that we want her to know it.

Mazel tov, friend.

Women's Work

You know you could buy socks cheaper from Walmart, right Mom?
 (Photo from agoodyarn.net)

     I just finished reading A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove by Laura Schenone and Knitting Ganseys by Brown-Reinsel, and I am currently knitting on a stealth project for a friend's wedding, a project which I'm endeavoring to make meaningful in subtle ways.   The two seem to come together to make me think deeeeep thooooooughts, so why not share, eh?

      To call myself a knitter always gives me a brief feeling that I am stating the obvious.   To be proud of myself for knitting a sweater, for searing a pork chop, for hand-piecing a quilt square, is a disconcerting feeling for a moment.   My great-great-great grandmother would not have called herself a knitter, a cook, a quilter, a cheese-maker, a pickle-maker, as though any of these were a hobby she chose to do lightly because she loved it.   I do not know which of these activities, or any other I didn't name, she took the most joy in, though it's certain she had some she enjoyed more.   I would suppose that she'd identify herself to me as a good Christian farmwife who took care of her family, leaving unsaid the fact that she had to take care of them by doing and making so many things.

       Frankly, I'd expect her to marvel a little at the many things I don't know how to do.   Send me back 150 years to when a relative of mine stepped off of a ship with her children, including a newborn she bore at sea, and I would be more useless than helpful.   This skill, knitting, that I cultivate for love of it, she learned so that her husband and children would be clothed.   Many women of that time and place knit as part of a cottage industry, to contribute to the family's financial stability.   I'm amazed they could, given what a single day required of them.   To eat cheese or bread meant that Mom had to make it, and the girls had to help.  To eat vegetables meant that Mom grew them right outside the back door.   Meat meant butchering, which Mom did.   Socks, mittens, sweaters all came from Mom's needles and spindle.   I, at twenty eight years old, have a fraction of the skills a girl half my age would have had, yet I am proud to wear the skills I have like a badge of honor.

      Yet, I cannot judge myself too harshly yet.   My great-great-grandmother would be at a loss faced with my morning, driving to work, using pipettes and machines to stain slides and a fluorescence microscope to assess the work, sending email and posting to this blog.   There is a good chance she might not even have been able to read it.   I know she was as intelligent as I am, and as creative.  She had to be, in order to meet the wide-ranging responsibilities heaped on her shoulders.  She could provide bread, cheese, potatoes to her family...I provide chicken tikka masala, sesame noodles, and baked ziti to mine.  

   When knitting became my passionate hobby, it felt new.   My mother knows how, and enjoys it mostly, but like most women of her generation, she likes to hike and travel and shop, and leisure time is precious.   Her generation embraced processed food and packages of socks as the willingly-paid price for that leisure time to spend with us kids.   Her generation finally got men to help.   Raised by them, women of my age felt "retro" and cool when we learned to knit and cook, making the "knitting craze" blaze around the western world in 2005, and we introduced the world to the "foodie" who marinates whole pigs in the bathtub, makes artisan cheese and fresh pasta at home.   We embraced what had been work for centuries before us and made it what we did outside our day jobs.

   My great-great-great grandmother, my mother, and I all share a sense of our responsibilities and a desire to love and care for family.   My great-great grandmother did this by taking on the massive task of homemaking, feeding, and clothing people when none of this was fast or easy.   As technology made these things faster and easier, my mother's generation did not become lazy or accept the reprieve, but instead pushed themselves to take on yet more, caring for and nurturing people outside of their family and community with careers.   Young women like myself continue to feel that tug of responsibility to the public world of career, but we are rediscovering how much joy and fun can be found in feeding people, clothing people in more traditional ways.   In a way, I am stating the obvious when I say that I am a knitter.   To say that I am a knitter is to say that I am committed to covering my loved ones in both physical and spiritual warmth...as women always have been.  It's our job.



Wait, Delores...the Kermis is next month.
Good, then I can finish this shawl.



No, check the TSA website.  If security had a problem
with these, would I be on the plane right now? I didn't think so.

     
     

Leading to This

   It has been something very close to 20 years since I first learned to cast on, make the knit stitch, and bind off.   It has been close to 10 years since I taught myself the purl stitch, expanding my knitting world by 100%.   Think of it...10 years in which I could do nothing but garter stitch rectangles, I kid you not.   No wonder I didn't like it that much.   Five years ago, I learned to use DPN's and circular needles to work in the round, allowing for projects that were not, by the grace of God, scarves.   The fire caught in me and each project I took on taught me new skills...increases, decreases, yarnovers, shortrows, colorwork.  I have made hats, lace shawls, mittens, stethoscope covers, socks, some of which I'm not quite ready to refer to as my own design.

   Until yesterday, I considered it a dance.   My life in knitting was wheeling from one randomly chosen delight to the next, going back and forth between easy and difficult, new and familiar.   Now I know that, in fact, it was all leading to this.   I feel like I can, for the first time, feel comfortable calling myself a Knitter, because I have crossed a major frontier and can never go back.   And it was good :).

 

I have knitted and seamed my very first sweater.   It fits.

 This is Jalapeno Flavored Cheesy Poof, and he is beautiful.

 SPECS:  Pattern: Cheesy Puffs, by Jillian Moreno
                 Source: Knitty.com   Winter 2005 issue
                 Minor alterations: My husband has arms ten miles long or so, so approximately four inches were added to the sleeve length.   Body was size M, but sleeve length requested for that size seemed pitifully short for him.
                 Yarn: Misti Alpaca Chunky, Hunter Green Melange colorway, nine hanks.  Purchased from a now-gone LYS.  
                 Needles: Size 10 aluminum straights, probably from Boye, and a size 9 circular for the collar
                 Start Date: sometime in spring-summer 2010.

    The knitting process overall was pretty simple.   It started out strong, and I cast on pretty much right away after the yarn purchase because I had fallen in love with the big chunky softness of this yarn.   The pattern got a little...meditative...after the entire back panel was complete, and the front panel barely got beyond cast-on as other projects captured my attention.   You all know how it is.

   My poor husband had almost lost hope that I would, in fact, finish when January 2012 hit.   My work involves short tasks to tend to interspersed by up to an hour of downtime, so I needed to fill it.   I hit on a combination of my two favorite things to do, reading, and knitting with the radio/TV in alternating bursts, as a semi-productive use of that time.   Thus, my usual post-Christmas knitting slump never occurred this year.   When the last of my Christmas catching-up was done, I fished around on my UFO shelf and the sweater came back to life.  Within a week, I had a front panel.   Within another two, I had two sleeves.   I was finishing entire hanks in a day, absolutely on fire.

    I recently picked up Principles of Knitting by Hiatt and Knitting in Plain English by Maggie Righetti from the library to figure out the best method of seaming it, then I just went for it.   Last night, as I watched a DVD of a recent miniseries of Jane Austen's Emma, I finished the seams.   Yes, his ends are not yet woven in, and he is in need of a quick blocking, but he is currently one of my proudest accomplishments.

This is Jalapeno Cheesy Poof in vest-like form, awaiting the sewing on of sleeves.   

My husband in his new sweater.  

   Doesn't my husband look so happy to be wearing him?   Here's to being kept warm for years to come, my love.

Post? You mean I need to post?

Happy 2012, my couple of readers out there!

I have no idea what has kept me off this blog so long, but I do apologize.   I do not have the de rigueur excuse of "I'm not knitting, so I've got nothing to show!"   I have been knitting.   Quite a lot.   You know, holidays and all that :).  

Top ten excuses you, my readers, might accept for several months of no posting:
1.      I was fairly certain that nobody would notice :).

2.      I was right.

3.      My desire to keep up with the Joneses (aka my buddy The Crafty Doctor) had not yet been piqued.   Who knew she had not descended into a period of ignoring the blog as I did?   Who knew she was actually, you know, maintaining a blog she started?  And that Dalek washcloth is pure cool.

4.     My mother already knows what's going on in my life.

5.     I'm listening to the archives of Cast On and reading through the archives of several knitblogs.   Envy and embarassment set in simultaneously.

6.     Holiday knitting went along at such speed and with such grit and determination that it was impossible to document.   Heisenberg's principle of Knitting Uncertainty: If you know how fast a holiday knitter is going, you don't know where (s)he is in the pattern.   It's all a blur, and a blog couldn't keep up.

7.     I decided this blog needed to be like a fashion designer's runway show... no tales of in-progress projects to bore you, just a twice a year display of the latest awesome. 

8.     My dog is not ready for her closeup.   She's a diva.

9.     I'm the worst knitting photographer in the known world, and everyone knows photographs of one's knitting are the only thing that makes people read a knitblog.

10.   I have, shockingly, been doing actual work at work.   I'm curing cancer, folks.   Seriously :).

   Stay tuned for actual posts this year, containing actual content about actual knitting that I have been doing.   Wait...don't leave me...would it change your mind if I promised you a post about my very first sweater, right now in the sewing-up stages?