The Persistence of Loss

Miss you, guy.

Loose Ends

This is one deadline I really wanted to make. I don't know why it matters, but I wanted to be done at the one year mark. I've got four more rows on the cap, then the rest of the sleeve. Maybe if I knit for my entire lunch hour tomorrow, and pick it up again as soon as I get home...

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.

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.

Hangdog

"I'm sad. I'm the saddest dog in the whole wide world."

Winston? What's wrong, guy?

"Well, I'm supposed to be learning stuff and going out to coffee with you, and having a good time in the world, but all you guys do is go to Home Depot without me or sit around and cough."

Oh, c'mon, guy. Is that really fair? We've both had the Death Cough for a month. We can't take you hiking up at the reservoir. We haven't felt good enough on a Saturday morning to drive all the way to Berkeley for class. You're not allowed in Home Depot. I'm trying to keep it together, what with the job thing and my being evicted from my super-sweet cubicle, and both Accountant Boy and I being sick. Besides, you played with Clem and Kaylee for three hours yesterday. That was good times, yeah?

"So sad. And bored. Bored and sad."

Would seeing some pictures of knitting help?

"No, not really."

OKAY THEN!


Yes, sometimes it pays to do what you know is right, even when it's hard. Even when it means unraveling and reknitting two-thirds of your work on a completed garment. This is my revised Sabine, almost finished a little less than a month ago, frogged three weeks ago, finished again yesterday afternoon. I made some small but important modifications to it, and it's just about perfect.


The red from the previous post is more accurate, but it's not too bad here. Thanks for the backdrop, Stainless Steel Fridge! (No problem! Hey, why not return the favor and fill me with something other than half-eaten burritos from Los Panchos? -- Stainless Steel Fridge)

Finished object post coming soon, after I finally do the finishing post for Ingenue. I can't in good conscience write it at work, but I'm not having much luck with it at home, either. See that face in the first picture? That face stares at me the entire time I'm at the computer. Consequently, I don't get a lot done when I'm at home. I'm trying to carve out more time for blogging, but it's not easy right now.

The Woman? What about your Buddy? Do I not merit a mention when discussing your time usage? Have you told them of our newest pursuit?

I was going to get to that later, Buddy. Maybe if we spent less time on this new pursuit and more time letting me type, I'd be able to tell the readers about your new favorite thing...

I've taken up JOGGING!

...or you can just tell them now. More on this story once I can get some pictures of it, or, better yet, some video. Nobody believes that Buddy's actually doing what I'm describing to them. He's like the Michigan J. Frog of feline fitness.

...walk around in circles, walk around in...

So here's what happened. I put Ol' Blue away for a while, because I couldn't face undoing the sleeve and starting over.

I started knitting this great big striped pullover, but then I got worried that the color joins at the end weren't going to stay in place, and I became dispirited. That project got shoved into the knitting box up in the library. Oddly enough, I had a dream about it last night. I was looking at a page of magazine clippings, and there were pictures of me sitting on a boulder on a windy beach, wearing the sweater. It looked horrible on me. I kept thinking, "Where did they get those pictures? When did I finish that sweater? I have got to have something done to my hair. Is that what I look like? Oh, GOD!"

With Big Stripy temporarily shelved, I then dove into the stash and pulled out the big skeins of Interlacements. I swatched with two strands of what is supposed to be sport weight yarn, but which knits up quite a bit larger. Doubled, it produced a fabric so thick and dense that I think it would be able to repel a knife attack. I knit a few rows of it single-skein style on size 6 needles, the size I use for worsted wools, and got a pretty good look. When I showed the smaller swatch to Accountant Boy, he said, "Yeah, honey, that's what it's supposed to look like." Dammit. That means that I have to find a project for it, and it's not going to be a big, quick project because I'm going to be knitting at light worsted gauge. It's up in the box with Big Stripy.


"Maybe a top-down, something simple, then. I know! I'll make that hoodie I like so much, the one that has the big neckline. I'll use the lavendar yarn I got at Stitches a couple of years ago. It'll still be a Stitches 2007 project! I wonder if I have a swatch of that yarn." As it turns out, I did have a swatch and it is the right gauge.

Problem One - the yarn smells, I don't know, sheepy. Let's call it sheepy. The washed swatch is slightly better, and gives me hope that I can dilute the odor enough to wear it. It's not necessarily a bad smell, kind of like hot cardboard in your car on a summer day. It's definitely more ruggedly wooly in texture than I'd prefer in something that will be framing my face. It is a hoodie, after all. This leads us to the next problem.

Problem Two - my great big head. If you saw me, your first thought would not be "wow! That gal's got an enormous head! She's like that little chicken from the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. No, not the chicken HAWK. The little chicken. The Widow Hen's little boy? You know what I'm talking about. With the glasses and the slide rule? Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about Larry. You always friggin' do this when I'm explaining something. You always gotta be friggin' Mr. Right all the time. Well how'd you like to be right about my fist in your face, Larry?" Maybe you don't have a belligerent, drunken personality rolling around in your head, poking his imaginary finger at your chest and calling you Larry. Maybe that's just me, and probably that's beside the point. The point is that my head doesn't look all that big until you measure it, because it's not symmetrical. My head happens to be longer front-to-back than most normal heads.

Why is this a problem? Well, because the pattern isn't written for the long-headed among us. If I knit according to the pattern, I'll have the increase seam that's supposed to run down the back of the hood starting right in the middle of the top of my head. Also, the hood will not stay on my head, which I would very much like it to do. I got several inches into the top, wrangling the needles with every row, before I realized that this was going to be a problem. That project hasn't even made it up to the box yet. In fact, there's no more room in the pretty project box.

Finally, with the greatest number of projects either on or near the needles in years, I came back around to Ol' Blue. I tried it on again. The big sleeve didn't bother me so much anymore. I liked it so much that I decided to continue it all the way to the wrist. I'm starting on the second sleeve tonight.


"Wonderful. How many more nights of being slapped in the face by your knitting will I have to endure, The Woman?"

I don't know, Buddy. Every time I give an estimate, I end up being wildy inaccurate. I'd prefer not to say. Hey, by the way, what do you think of the library? Cool, huh?

"I especially like the futon. You might tell the dog to stop urinating on it while you're away at work. Unsightly."

Pretty hard to him to do that from his crate in the other room, so I don't know what you're...ah, Buddy! Dammit, guy!

Something Completely Different

The blue sweater continues to kick my ass with its refusal to be finished. It's as though the sleeve - yes there is still only one - is getting shorter as I knit it. I keep trying it on and loving it, especially the neckline, but I just cannot seem to finish the sleeves. Perhaps I should frog back the sleeve I've already done and finish both of them off as capped sleeves. I left the waste yarn in the working sleeve for this reason. I know in my heart that I don't want it to have capped sleeves, but if I have any hope of finishing it before summer, I might have to give in. Poor Ol' Blue

While I've been contemplating this, I've also been working on what I thought would be the antithesis of that sweater. I started knitting a large gauge sweater on great big needles, thinking that the almost instant gratification would be a nice break from the tedium of Ol' Blue. Know what I've forgotten about great big needles? After an hour or so of knitting with them, my wrist starts to hurt and I have to stop working with the great big needles for at least a few days. But I can't go back to Ol' Blue, because I'm still not over the unrelenting boredom of it.


I'm thinking about starting a third sweater with this stuff. It's the sport/DK weight from Interlacements. I've got two 850-yard skeins of it, and I'd almost certainly double it and knit it as a worsted yarn. Ol' Blue is being knit at a light DK gauge due to swatch/reality issues, and I can't bear the thought of two projects on the needles at that gauge.

I haven't decided what it should be yet, but I'm thinking something sort of Trekkie without being too Out There, if you take my meaning. The colors remind me of the Mutara Nebula from "Wrath of Khan". Oh, Montalban!


"Oh, handsome, courtly Montalban! How I shall miss your dulcet voice, reminiscent of nights sipping brandy by the fire! Your courtly manner brought grace and class to every stage you graced, and your gentlmanly handsomeness vivified every screen, with your warm, olive skin and your manly chest leading the way into every scene. Your suave, virile hips..."

Uh, Buddy?

"Yes, the Woman?"

You O.K. there, guy?

"Well, no, and thank you for finally asking, the Woman. The stage of the world is one light darker for the loss of Montalban. I shall miss him."

Yeah, alright, but it just seems like you're going to REALLY miss him. A LOT. I don't know how to ask this, and you know I'd never pry, but Buddy? Is there something you're not telling me? Did you have a crush on Ricardo Montalban?

"KHAAAAAN! KHAAAAAAAAAN!"

Guess we all should've seen that coming.

Preen

Purpley

Remember this thing? I'm finishing it by Wednesday, my birthday. I'm finishing it, and then I'm not knitting anything with ribbon for the rest of the summer. I'm already a few rows into the back above the spit for the arms, so I think it's possible.

"Purpley!" said Daisy. "Hey, did you ever finish that grey top?"

"What grey top?"

"The one with the ribbon yarn."

"Yeah. I wore it last week. You saw it."

"No, not the one with the big stripes. The GREY one."

"We mustn't speak of it, lest we permanently damage our friendship. Change the subject. Change the subject now."

"Look! Over there! It's my puppy!"


"Good show, Daisy. No anger can stand when faced with the cuteness of the puppy."

"The Woman!"

"Except for Buddy's anger, of course."

"Of course."


"Stop bringing these beasts into our home, the Woman!"

"She's not going to live here, Buddy. She's just visiting."

"Oh, well then. The rationalizing makes it acceptable, does it? What if we say that I'm not going to permanently disfigure her, that I'm just going to lightly maul her. Does that make everyone happy?"


"Daisy, you might want to grab your puppy."

It'll only be a couple of weeks until she's too big for him to fight, but that doesn't mean he won't try. That's my Buddy. Territorial, pugnacious, and no ability to assess risk.

Invisible Sun

Optimism

Pan o Palo

Pan o palo. Yes. Hmmmm. Interesting choice.

Buddy, I don't think that phrase means what you think it means.

Of course it does, the Woman. "Bread or stick". Am I the only one in this house versed in the art of babelfish?

Yes, literally translated that's what it means if you take it out of context, but what Diaz was saying was...

Good, then. We agree. I'm staring at a scrumptious cake of yarn, and cake is much like bread, and very near the cake is a beautiful, shiny brass stick. I do so love playing with sticks. And so I'm faced with a choice, yes? Bread or stick? Hmmm.

Oh, God. Here comes that headache again.

At least I'm not trying desperately to shove the whole ball in my gaping maw. Advantage, Buddy.

Who's trying to shove...WINSTON!


I decided that the way to learn to crochet was to just dive right into it, and to Hell with all of that "knit a long, skinny scarf" business. I found a pattern in Stitch and Bitch Crochet that had arms worked separately from the body, and I'm going for it.

This is Debbie Bliss Aran Tweed, which I got in a swap from KnittingSpaz right about this time last year. I don't know why I wanted it, but I traded some Koigu and The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns for more than twenty balls of it in green and orange. I've knit with Aran Tweed before, and it was an experience in pain. It's rough, hard to slide along the needles and prone to breaking. Luckily, these things are less of an issue with crochet. I think it's going to turn out great, but then again, I am only a couple of inches in on one of the sleeves. We'll see how I feel once I get to the body.

lure

Tumbling Forward

Lately, I've had this feeling that I'm tumbling forward through my days, like I'm running downhill and I want to stop for a second but I can't. I'm going so fast, and it's O.K. because I'm not taking any bad steps so I'm still on my feet. If another hiker were watching me, I'd appear to be confidently striding over the ground. Only I know that I'm terrified, that I don't dare stop for a drink of water or to catch my breath because I'm afraid of what will happen if I...


...what the Hell is going on up there? Winston! What are you doing?

He's probably up there tearing his cage apart, the Woman. Shall I go and check on him?

No, Buddy. I think that would be an extraordinarily bad idea. He's unhappy enough being crated all day. The last thing he needs right now is to see you outside the wire with that look on your face.

I'll simply pop upstairs and tell the blunderbuss that I'm proud of him for being tricked into captivity every morning.

NO! Buddy, that's part of the problem right there, fella. I don't have a moment's peace, what with Win wanting to play and you wanting to, oh I don't know, terrorize him? Is that what it's called? What are you trying to do when you walk up to him and howl angrily in his face?

Love him, in my own, special way, the Woman. I am trying to give. I am a giver.

Oh, you're giving, alright. You're giving me a headache that's extending all the way down my spine to my ass. Let's get back to the matter at hand.

My need for more live animals in my diet?

No, my feeling that everything in my life is being held together with the most tenuous of bindings.


Have you discussed it with the Man?

Well, I have, but I'm not able to explain it very well...

Because I'm sure it would be a very small matter to buy some feeder mice and just set them free in the garage.

Are we talking about me or about your wacky plan to create a hunting ground around the work bench?

Which topic is more likely to please me?

I give up. Let's just talk about the sweater.

Details
Pattern
My own, again. I looked to the Bold and Bulky cardigan in Fitted Knits for a start, but only for the number of stitches to cast on across the back and arms, and roughly where to put the markers. I love the patterns in that book, but I'm finding it more useful as a cast-on guide. If my yarn is (x) gauge, look at (y) pattern.

For the record, it's 35" around, 20" long, with armscye depth of 7.5". There is no waist shaping.


Yarn/Notions
Araucania Limari in color 556 - Vina del Mar. I had five skeins, one of my last impulse purchases from Elann.com. They only had five skeins left, and I thought, "EVER! They'll never have it again! SOLD!" When it turned out that the did have more of it a few months later, and that Webs had a huge closeout of it as well, I resisted the temptation to buy at least a couple of additional skeins. The whole point was that this was a stash-busting project. We don't buy more yarn in order to reduce the stash. This, then, was another "if I only have this much yarn, how far will that get me" projects. I only had 305 yards. I know Yarndex says that it's more, but my skein tags and Webs say 61 yards.

I didn't have a button that matched exactly. I came up with the idea of putting these two buttons together until I could get to Britex to find the perfect one. Turns out I like this solution so much that I'm probably not going to look for anything else.


Needles
Addi Turbo US17. For some reason, I have three Addi circular needles in this size, including the 16" that I used for the arms. I used a Brittany Birch crochet hook, size M, for the borders.

Time
I don't know, maybe two weeks? I couldn't work on it full time, because the furry creatures take a lot of attention in the evenings. It was only a few hours of actual knitting.

Modifications/Design Thoughts
I started with Big and Bulky, but I wanted a straight front so I cast on for the same overall width as the back neck. From there, I was on my own.

I came up with the idea of adding a very slight bell to the sleeves because I've found, strangely enough, that adding more bulk to the sleeve actually makes my whole forearm/waist vertical zone look slimmer. A narrowing bulky sleeve has the same stumpifying effect on me as pegged pants. I ended up splitting the skeins in order to make the arms match.

The crochet borders turned out better than I thought they would. I made it around the neck and body one time before I started to get worried about running out of yarn. Every individual edge after that was done with great anxiety, because I was afraid that I'd get back around one side and the bottom hem, but not have enough for the other front edge. I had just enough yarn to get a second round around the body. There were only inches-long scraps left.

Conclusions
I wish I weren't on a yarn buying freeze, because I love working with Limari. Now that I know it's not necessarily going to make me look like I'm wearing a parka, I'd love to make more things with it. I have all of those books for Rowan Big Wool, and so many patterns that would look great in colors 558 or 567. Now I know about what I could make with five or six skeins of it, I wish I had more.

I really like this bulky little sweater. I think I'll get a good bit of wear out of it, even over the summer. It's going to be perfect for sitting out on the patio in the evenings.

With the blunderbuss.

Yes, Buddy, with Winston.

Why does he get to venture outside with you, while I am forced to watch from behind the windows?

Because this is what happens when we leave him in his crate. That's a pile of 'revolutionary Tempur material' next to him.


Curious. And yet my favorite bed is still intact. Who is the troublemaker now, hmm?

Pretty sure it's still you, guy. If you'll excuse me, I have to pop a Zantac and head off to work.

Steady on, the Woman. Steady on.

A Cat of Action

We All Float On

So close. So very close to having a picture of the completed Fluffy Angora Menace. I have the arms done, and most of the ends woven in. I don't love the waist bind-off, but I could have lived with it. In my haste to just get it finished so that I could work on something more colorful and less allergenic, I made a calculation error on the neckline. I crocheted into every stitch along the v-neck, not every three out of four. It's way too loose. I know I'll be able to redo it tonight in about half an hour, and I could redo the waist pretty easily as well, but now I'm mad at it. And I feel too soft in the middle to wear it, anyway. And it's 77 degrees outside right now. Dammit.

In brighter news, I won a contest! This contest! I'm so excited! I've already got the perfect pair of jeans to go with it.

In light of my winning a contest for a close-fitting knit vest, and of the aforementioned state of middle softness, I thought it'd be a good idea to go ahead and register for Bay to Breakers. We did it last year, and we pledged to start training for this year as soon as we'd recovered, and then...well, just read the entries between then and now. There were disfigurements, both sports-related and clerical. There were huge changes at home and at work. There was very real sadness and loss. Everything went sideways. We're recovering, but we now have a little less than two months to train, and we're not in nearly the same condition that we were in at this time last year. Ah, well. Now that I've gone through the experience of losing a toenail, I know it's not something to dread. That's pretty much my new motto. "Now that I've gone through (x), I'm not dreading it anymore."

Finally, another missive from the strange world in which I wander. There's always something a little off in my world, something going on just beyond the corner of my eye. I like living in this world, because it's an endless source of entertainment. Sometimes, it's about hauntings. Sometimes, it's about corporeal things that are not quite right. Usually, as is the case today, it's about my cat.

Buddy may have learned to command Winston using our hand signals. Last night, I watched as he raised up his paw and wagged it around a little bit in what I thought was a precursor to a slap across the nose. Winston threw himself to the ground and rolled over repeatedly, as though Buddy were giving him the signal to do so. Now, maybe it was a coincidence, the paw gesture and the response. Maybe Win was trying to use every trick that he knew to ingratiate himself with the tiny king, and I happened to read too much meaning in his playful maneuverings. Maybe. But I know what I saw. Even if nobody else ever sees it, even if he never does it again, I'll never be convinced that it was anything less than Buddy commanding the dog and the dog obeying.

el diablo en el ojo

Clever Phrases Elude Me

On Winston, knitting and fitness --


Yes, we changed young Bug's name. He's as cute as a bug, which is probably how the name came about in the shelter, but the name just wasn't working, in part because 'Bug' is too close to 'Buddy', but in larger part because I've never understood the phrase 'cute as a bug'. I find insects and arachnids fascinating and somewhat alien, but not cute.

We bandied about names for a few days, briefly considering Kojak because of a perceived resemblance to Telly Savalas, and rejecting several other names outright. "You know, when he gets that inquisitive, thoughtful look on his face, he reminds me of Winston Churchill."


The Woman! How could you? I thought that I was your Churchill! I must now despise this usurper!

We call him Win for short, because he's a WINNER.

So angry. So very, very angry. And I don't like that he tries to sniff me in personal places. Dog never tried to do that. She respected my privacy. He needs boundaries, the Woman.

It's a sign of friendliness and affection, Buddy.

In a shady side-street bath house, perhaps. You do know that I still remember how to, how shall I delicately put this, demarcate my limits, yes?

Noted.


This one's smart. He caught on to 'easy' after about five tries. He will not lunge for that ball, no matter how enticingly we wave it in front of his muzzle. We have to constantly modify the order of commands we give him when we're practicing our obedience lessons. He learns them like they're pieces of a dance routine. "Sit - down - sit - look - down. Got it. I don't even need the hand signals."


Here he is with his friend, Miss Josie Kat, his neighbor at Pit Bull Hall. We took him out there a week ago to play with her. We're hoping that she finds a home in the East Bay, maybe on this side of the hills, so that we can get them together for play dates. (We'd settle for her just finding a home ANYWHERE. She's been at the Hall for a long time.) That's another big difference between Winston and Lucy. Win likes playing with other dogs, something that was just too hard for Lou.

With everything that's happened in the last month, I haven't really had quiet time to think about my old girl. I'm only starting to do that now, to miss her. I miss the howls of joy when we'd ask her if she wanted to go for a walk. I miss her peculiar, goofy preference for hot concrete over cool, soft lawn. I miss her intense concentration when we'd give her strange commands like "out of the kitchen" or "let the cat drink from the water bowl first". I miss the way that she'd quiver from nose to tail when we had her in a sit-stay, barely able to contain her ever-present glee. The staff at VMS sent us a lovely book with condolences in the end pages a couple of weeks ago, and one of the notes in it said something like "Lucy was a joy, because she was so happy to BE."

We've been saying that Winston's smarter than Lucy was, but I think that's a misrepresentation of her intellect. She was smart in her own way - as smart as she needed to be to make us happy - and maybe more willful than we knew. She knew all of the commands. She also knew that staring blankly at us for long enough meant that we'd give up and let her get away with not obeying them.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, because I want to reassure myself. I want to feel that I'm not trying to replace her, to make light of the loss of her by comparing her unfavorably to the newer, and in some ways 'better' dog. I emerge from these frequent reveries with the same conclusions. It wasn't too soon, because Win needed us and we needed something bright in our lives after those weeks of darkness. He's not a replacement dog, because Lou was irreplaceable. He's not even a better dog, because that'd mean that we were judging them by the same standards, and that's not fair to either of them. He's simply a different dog.

He's also not a perfect dog. See how little progress I've made on my fluffy angora sweater? Guess who wants that angora in his mouth? (Hint: Buddy loathes angora.) I spent two hours untangling and rewinding 100 yards of it the other night. We keep reminding ourselves that he's barely more than a puppy, just a year old, and that he's a little mouthy as a result. It's just that he's got such a big mouth.


It's about seven inches down from the back of the neck now, with about an inch to go for it the armscyes to be deep enough for layering a shirt underneath. I'm pretty close to the point where I'll separate the sleeves, and also fairly close to closing up the v-neck. It should fly off the needles at that point, and in a good way, not because half the stitches and a ninety-yard ball are in a pit bull's mouth.

I'm in the early stages of my annual fitness restart. I ran on Saturday, and Accountant Boy and I lifted weights yesterday. My goal for this week is to make it to the gym just two more times. More would be super, but I'm trying not to set my expectations too high. Next week's goal is to feel good enough about my progress to call my trainer and schedule an appointment. My last call to her, a voicemail message, went something like this:

"Yeah, uh, Amazon? It's me. Hey, I'm not going to make it to my session tomorrow, because my dad suddenly, uh, died. And I'm O.K., so don't worry about me, but the funeral's tomorrow and I'm standing by the bathrooms at Costco in a business suit with a cart full of liquor because it's my job to get everyone drunk and keep them drunk. Did you know that they'll open a checkstand for you if you walk up in a suit? Weird, huh? I think it's because A.B. and I look like FBI agents. So, yeah, not training tomorrow. Look, I gotta go because I hate people who talk on cell phones in stores, and now I'm one of those douchebags. Talk to you soon, O.K.?"

I should maybe call her back.

Flash

I've had this yarn for almost two years. I bought it at Stitches in 2006, and it's almost Stitches time again, so yeah, two years. I've been trying to put my finger on why I was so drawn to it, and I finally figured it out the other day. The colors remind me of the city of Mongo from 'Flash Gordon'.

I know what you're probably all thinking, especially Cristi. Just hear me out on this one.

Back when I was a kid, cable television was a revolutionary thing. Prior to getting it, we had to watch whatever we could find on the dial, and it was literally a DIAL that one cranked around until a broadcast channel came up on the screen. There weren't fifteen separate channels for the premium stations, either. There was one HBO, one Cinemax, one Showtime. And when we first got cable, those three channels had apparently latched on to 'Flash Gordon' as their go-to midday program. We probably watched it a hundred times. I loved the colors. I loved the action. I loved the music, even though I'll admit that it's not one of Queen's crowning achievments. I loved Timothy Dalton in his green tights. If it was on, I was watching it.


A new movie supplanted it on the schedule, probably 'Return of the Jedi' or something similarly big, and I didn't see my beloved 'Flash Gordon' again for more than two decades. It only briefly came out on DVD before going out of print. I forgot about it.

Then, a magical thing happened. Encore or Starz or one of those channels found a copy, dusted it off, and threw it onto one of their secondary channels. It was as wonderful and cheesy as I'd remembered. If anything, it might actually be better with a little aging. Aside from Dale's Earth clothes, it doesn't look dated. Sure, the special effects are bad, but they're not supposed to be anything other than what they are. It's a live-action comic book, not cinéma-vérité. The DVD was still in print in Brazil, so I paid a premium and got a copy of it, not realizing that it would be rereleased for the 25th anniversary. Oh, well. It may not have the extras, but my copy has the option of Portuguese subtitles.

The four balls of yarn I used for this project reminded me of all of the colors of Mongo - the reds of the guards' uniforms, the gold curtains around Dale's bedchamber, the violet clouds and the oranges of the lightning field. There's even a little bit of hot pink every so often, like Princess Aura's shiny catsuit. Needless to say, it's impossible to photograph with accurate color, because of all of that red. Trust me on this one - it's gorgeous in real life.


Details

Dr. Zarkov: "Get your toothbrush and whatever!" (The Pattern)

Clapotis from Knitty, Fall 2004

Hedonia: "It has no name. Many brave men died to bring it here from the Galaxy of Pleasure." (The Yarn)

Interlacements Dyer's Choice from a bin at Stitches. It was probably meant to be Toasty Toes, but it didn't have enough twist. Each skein had about 185 yards, and I used a little less than four skeins. It's another stash-reduction project, which makes me very, very happy.

Flash: "Where are the weapons?" Arborian: "Feel one." (The Needles)

Brittany Birch, size 6 US. I routinely start flat knitting projects with needles two sizes smaller than the pattern calls for, and more often than not, it works out. See? I can be taught.

Dale Arden: "Flash! Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!" (The Time)

I think I started it on January 9th, and I bound off and wove in the ends on January 24th.

Voltan: "Flying blind on a rocket cycle?" (The Modifications)

I left off one increase section, so it's not quite as wide as the pattern. Also, I had no idea how much it would grow once I dropped all of the stitches, so I kept thinking it was too short. Instead of thirteen straight sections, I had twenty. It's long, stretching about an inch below the hem of my coat on both sides when hung straight around my neck. I like it this way. It makes it easier to drape it around my shoulders.


Robot: "Long live Flash. You've saved your Earth. Have a nice day." (Conclusions)

I'd forgotten how boring the last, oh, two thirds of a project like this can be. I think I chased the 'just want to do something mindless' urge out of my system.

I bought this yarn for this project, and I'm glad that I stuck with that plan. I think the rippling of the dropped stitches shows off the colors beautifully.

I've worn my new Clapotis quite a bit since finishing it. It was cold down at my parents' house, sunny but barely above freezing during my dad's funeral. My mom likes to turn off the heater at night, so I slept with my freshly completed project around my neck at least twice while I was there. It's warm and comfortable, and not one bit itchy. It's perfect.


In other news, Buddy's decided to stop me from pursuing further education in systems analysis. Last night, he stomped over to my spot on the couch, rammed the book off of my lap with his head, then promptly laid on it. "Buddy! Dammit, guy! I'm already a week behind because of the funeral and everything. Give me a break!" He was not swayed. He arched his back and somehow managed to scoot himself even farther onto the opened book.