Neoprene Cockfighting Suit

"I just had a flash of a dream. It was a tight shot of a woman's hands wrapping blue neoprene pads around the legs and feet of a rooster. There was an even tighter shot of the neoprene covering the rooster's talons. I watched as she then put a full body suit on him, pressing it firmly closed at the breast, and pulled a tiny hat over his head and fastened the extended neck guard, all also made of neoprene, under his beak. I didn't see any more of the woman than her hands. The whole scene took about ten seconds, and it looked like background video from a newscast."

"Sounds to me like someone's angling for a spot on Donny Deutsch."

"That's my big idea? Protective gear for fighting chickens?"

"It practically sells itself!"

"No, no it doesn't. Because here's what else I remember. The suit completely enveloped the body of the rooster, pinning his wings to his body. How long do you think the cockfight's going to last if the roosters lose their balance, fall flat on their backs and end up futilely kicking the air with their little neoprene legs?"

I had that dream a little more than a year ago. I still don't know what it means.

Meanwhile, I finally decided that I hated the idea of a Big Kureyon garment, but that I hated the idea of ten balls of the stuff sitting in my stash bin even more. My knitting friend, let's call her Natasha, and I recently took a crochet class. I already knew how to crochet, but it sounded like fun, so what the Hell. Anyway, someone asked the instructor what would happen if one kept adding rounds to a granny square, as though there were some punishment to be meted out for not stopping at the prescribed number of repeats. "You'd just have a bigger square. But why would you want to do that? It'd be so boring."

Challenge accepted, my good man.


Details
Pattern
No pattern.

I took a ball of Kureyon, chained six stitches, joined, made granny square rounds until I'd almost run out of yarn, then fastened off the last loop. It ended up being eleven rounds for each of the big squares.

It seemed like it was going to be too small when I finished, and I spent a good bit of time thinking about how to stretch it out to twelve squares. No matter how I did the math, I was never going to get more than eleven out of it. I'd play around with Post-It notes during conference calls, rearranging the squares on my desk in as many ways as I could think to shift them, but all of the best arrangements, meaning those that would make the final product look like a blanket instead of an unfinished craft class experiment, had either nine or twelve squares. I finally came up with the four little squares solution.

And you know what? The instructor was right. It was really, really boring. The only thing that kept me going was watching the color changes happen.

Yarn
Noro Big Kureyon in color 8, long discontinued. I used about eight and a half balls of it.

The color's hard to photograph. The close-up under the bright light captures it, but that's not entirely true, because it's never under that kind of light in my house. It ends up looking murkier than that most of the time.

The yarn itself is, well, it's Noro. Some of the balls were continuous, some of them had three or four knots in them. The color repeats weren't consistent from ball to ball, which is obvious when you look at the squares. Each was started with one end of the ball and worked straight through. No two are the same. That's the nature of Noro, and that's why I don't work with it much. That much inconsistency drives me crazy.

It made a fairly stiff blanket, because the yarn is bulkier than it seems in the skein. It'd work almost as well as a rug.

Needles
Brittany Birch hook, size I, except when I'd forget and pick up the H by mistake. I don't think it happened too often, though.

Time
About two weeks to finish the squares, mostly on lunch hours. It took another week for me to get around to linking them all together, and a couple more days before I felt like weaving in the ends.


Modifications
None, because it wasn't a pattern.


Conclusions
Is it the most finished, elegant blanket I've ever seen? Well, no. I got bored when sewing in the tails, so some of them cross back over other stitches. The wool is more rustic than I usually like. And, you know, it's granny squares. It's going to be more country than rock 'n roll.

But here's the thing. I was never going to make anything else out of that yarn. Ever. I got a good-size blanket out of it, especially after washing and blocking. It took three weeks total, and that's with a few days of staring at the stack of squares and sighing because I didn't want to put the damned thing together. I got rid of about 1400 yard from my stash, with enough left for a scarf.

The most important thing is that I like looking at it when it's wrapped around my feet. The colors really are beautiful. All in all, a success.

...and then I saw this. Now I feel inadequate.

Green (Late Autumn Ground)

Domina, a word, with your permission?

Yes, Bernini's David?

Domina, the David cannot help but notice that the most hirsute member of the household has not been under his watchful eye this week. Has he gone on a campaign to Gaul?

Oh, David...yes, in a manner of speaking. I think he'd like the euphemism. Yes, Buddy is on an extended campaign at the edge of the frontier.

I take your meaning, Domina. This saddens the David. The tiny master did so entertain me with his capering schemes, his boisterous goadings. "Slay the Philistine, you cast-resin fop! Stop him before he eats my entire dinner! Useless, you are. USELESS!" Such a wit he had, for he could not possibly have meant it in anything but jest. I regret not being a better guardian of his repast. I shall miss him. See how I furrow my chiseled brow in consternation and regret?

And surely you must have noticed my distress, for you have made this lovely garment for me. Why, thank you, Domina! The David is comforted.

Nice segue, my high-relief friend. Let's talk about knitting for a moment, shall we?


I'm still not of a mind to do the formal write-ups on my projects, but I'm finally producing things that I like, things that work in some way. I had a string of "hey, guys? I used to know how to knit, right?" projects this summer, but it's getting better now.

With that in mind, here are the details on this scarf. It's two skeins of Knitpicks Swish Bulky in Verdant Heather, knit on size eleven needles. I cast on 32 stitches, did a two-by-two rib for about six rows, then did a cable cross on two of the four sections of eight stitches. It was an experiment in reversible cabling. Basically, K2, P2, K2, P2, hold four to the front on a cable needle, K2, P2, K2 & P2 off of cable, K2, P2, K2, P2, hold four to the front, K2, P2, K2 & P2 off of cable. I worked a few more rounds in ribbing, then did another set of crosses over the stitches I hadn't cabled in the last go 'round. It made this neat sort of tree bark pattern.

I decided that I wasn't going to care about getting the crosses spread out equally. If the cables varied in length, so be it. This was my lunchroom project, so I tried to not put too much pressure on myself with it. I ended up with fairly uniform crosses anyway, with only a couple noticeably shorter than the rest.

This yarn ended up being much easier to work with than I'd though it would be. I used all but about a foot of it. The color reminds me of the mossy grass in the yard. It's been raining for a week, and the brown of summer is giving way to the rich, damp, dark green of winter. The color is only correct in the middle picture. It's beautiful.



Anyway, I made a scarf and it looks like a scarf. That's progress. I'm a knitter.

Thank you, everyone, for your comments about Buddy. I always did see him as a kindred spirit to Ripple, though they never met. He was a remarkable cat. And I still can't sleep if it's too quiet in our room. I hadn't realized how reliant I was on his weight pressing into my ribs and his purr in my ear. He used to stay next to me until I fell asleep, then head off to do whatever important work he did at night. If it got chilly enough, he'd stay up longer. He only stayed on the bed for the whole night if it was especially cold. It snowed here for the first time in a decade on Sunday night. Dammit, Buddy.

More knitting updates, possibly tomorrow. I've finished some nice sweaters, and haven't taken the time to document them.

Farewell, My Tiny King

This is not a post I ever wanted to write.

Our beloved Buddy Katzmann Schmidt left us this morning. He was doing what he loved, frolicking around the house and enticing Winston to forbidden chases, when he lept from the stairs, suddenly collapsed, and went limp. He was gone before we could get him into the car.

Buddy was more dog than cat, more human than dog, maybe something else entirely. I've always thought that either of the first two comparisons might be somehow insulting to him. Still, it's hard not to make them. He trotted up to us when we called him. He'd sit in front of me and meow when he wanted to play Koosh-on-a-wire, just like a dog would. There was a time when I felt bad for bringing him inside permanently, so I taught him to walk around the yard on a leash. When I'd call Winston over to play, nine times out of ten Buddy would race in from another direction and sit between us, stopping the big guy in his tracks. "Buddy, goddammit, stop screwing with him." And then, invariably, Buddy would jump up onto the ottoman next to me and watch Winston and I play ball. It was as though he wanted to help with the training.


He didn't do typical cat-like things. No jumping on the counters or climbing across the back of the sofa and slapping at the back of your neck while you were trying to watch television, no clawing the upholstery, no sudden bites when he'd decided that he'd had enough of you. Buddy never had enough of anyone. He never demanded love, but he never walked away from it, either. In our ten years with him, he spent countless hours next to us on the couch, sometimes tucked under our arms, sometimes just resting against our legs, and never had enough of us.

Buddy would have been eighteen next spring, a good long life for a cat. But it's never long enough.

It's two in the morning. I have to be at work in six hours. But I can't sleep, because he's not curled up at my side. I'd hoped that typing this out would make me tired, that this was what I needed to do before finally being able to settle in next to A.B. and Winston, but it's not helping.

I'm haunted, not by my last sight of him, but by the memory of him in the days before. On Friday, he sat behind the chair I'm sitting in now and meowed at me. When I turned around, he hopped smartly to his feet and marched into the kitchen, where I kept his favorite toy. We played for a few minutes, and I marvelled at how well he still moved. "Nice chase, Buddy! We'll play again on Monday when I get home from work." It was an after-work think, Koosh-on-a-wire.

Last night, at the BadRap charity event, I talked about him to dozens of people, telling them what a neat cat he was, how he had Winston firmly under his control. We all laughed at the thought. "You should get that on video and share it with the group." Buddy was an inspiration to many cat-loving pit bull owners. I promised that I would remember to record the next time Buddy cut Winston off on his way to a ballgame. But, of course, I never did record it.

This morning, Winston and Buddy were both on the bed. Winston was laying across Accountant Boy's ankles, and Buddy stretched out to face him, laying across my feet. "Look! Buddy's learning a new trick! He's doing The Winston!" We stayed in bed for a long time, not wanting to move them. Later, I looked behind the recliner to see why the vertical blinds were askew. Buddy looked up at me, slats surrounding him, pale sun lighting up his bright, green eyes. He looked stunning. "I should get my camera. You look so handsome. I'm so happy that you're my cat." I told him that all the time, several times a day. "I love you, Katzmann." That look, him staring up at me inquisitively from behind the recliner, was the last look we ever shared. I reached down to scratch his ears, then went upstairs to get dressed. I was up there when A.B. shouted desperately for my help, even as we both realized that there wasn't anything that we could do.

All I can see when I close my eyes are images of my beautiful boy, happy and active, defiantly youthful and vibrant. They're wonderful images, all of them. I'm lucky to have so many. I can't believe that I won't see him again. And I can't sleep.

Acorn

Confession time.

I lost all interest in talking about myself for a while, and as a result I lost all interest in blogging. I then grew depressed over my lack of creative motivation, which pushed me even further away from here. I didn't do any of the ambitiously planned things that I said I was going to do while I was unemployed. It was not all that I thought it would be.

Just at the point where I thought I was going to lose my mind, vacuuming the house three times a day and spending an entire week not needing to put on shoes because I didn't stray beyond the edge of my property, I got a new job. Good news, yes, but not so good for blogging. My new job is more restrictive than my old one when it comes to the Internet, and I've kind of been enjoying actually working when I'm at work.


I have been knitting, but I haven't been all that great about writing about it. I finished Forestry more than a month ago, and I took some not-so-great pictures of it, but I forgot to write down what size needles I used. I started on one of my oldest projects in the bin, and I'm about halfway through the chest/back/arms. I swatched some silk last night. It's good. I'm just not writing much about it.

In short, this isn't a 'give up' post. It's also not a 'catch up' post. I may never go back and write about the mods I made to Forestry or the sweater I'm making now. If someone were to ask me about either of them, which is improbable since I've done an even worse job of keeping up over at Ravelry, I'd try to come up with more information. Otherwise, it's a done deal.

What does that mean for "Knitting for the Large-Headed Gal"? I hesitate to call this a relaunch, because then I'd feel compelled to keep up, and I don't write well under that kind of pressure. It's why I took a job nearly identical to my last one instead of running off to become a writer. For me, writing is like being in a pen with a silverback gorilla. I have to look askance at it while picking at the grass in front of me, never staring at it head-on.

It's an acorn year for the oak tree in my front yard. A pair of doves built a nest above my deck last week. It's almost the end of summer, but things continue to make a go of their fresh starts.

Let's move forward from here.

Heavy Boots of Lead

"Alright, Blunder. Hold that pose. Nice job of looking pensive. Good furrowing."

"O.K., but Buddy?"

"Yes, Blunder."

"I wasn't trying to look pensived or whatever. I was just waiting for something fun to happen outside. This is just how I look all the time."

"Oh, dear. How many times must I explain this to you, you great, lumbering oaf? We are to lie here and look pensive as a reflection of the Woman's current state of mind as she stands in the no-mans'-land between her old and new lives. The camera is her mirror-glass, and we are the reflections of pensiveness of her soul. It's all very artistic. Now furrow that brow. Furrow, you foul beast!"

"Umm, Buddy? She seems kinda alright, actually."

"That's because you don't gaze deep into her soul, not as I do. I stare at her for hours and relish the gentle feel of her breath on my whiskers. While she's sleeping."

"Man, that's kinda creepy. I don't think she wants me to do that. I don't even think she wants you to do that. But I guess I could try harder to see the pencils in her soles or whatever. Hold on."


"Nope, still looks O.K. to me. On the plus side, I may have head-tilted my way into a walk around the neighborhood. Yeah!"

"And yet I am the one who understands her vision. Where is my reward? Dammit!

Almost two months into being differently-employed, and I still only have them engaging in imaginary conversations every couple of days or so.

It's been a whirlwind of activity since May 1st. Daisy and Falstaff moved out of our rental house, Daisy moved across the country, Accountant Boy bought another car, Winston made a couple of new friends of the bully-dog persuasion, and I think I broke a couple of fingers while putting down a new floor in our bathroom. It hasn't been boring, I'll say that much for it.

Oh, and I'm still working on Forestry, the stupidest project to have on the needles during the summer in Contra Costa County. I have to sew in the sleeves and knit the collar, but it's slow going now that our unseasonably cold spring has given way to the normal summer. I'm also being slowed by my right hand, which has some kind of arthritic clicky thing going on. I think I injured it while painting the rental house. Of all of the things over there that could hurt me, I least expected trouble from the paint. And yet it was the paint that almost killed me. Who would have thought that a quart of enamel would be behind this exclamation: "Why the F%$K do things keep EXPLODING IN MY FACE IN THIS GODDAMN HOUSE???" But that's a story for another day.