Author: Karen

I’ve been reading a lot of knitting blogs this week, and apparently that’s where you go when you knit sleeves. I think the idea behind the name is that sleeves take so damn long to knit you feel like you’re stuck on them–stuck on Sleeve Island. I may be marooned on Sleeve Island, since last night I unraveled about nine inches of the first sleeve, due to a too-tight wrist and a baggy elbow.

But I told myslef that if it’s worth doing and giving myself carpal tunnel syndrome, it’s worth doing right. So I’ll start over tomorrow night, and until further notice be on Sleeve Island. Maybe there will be caabana boys!

Consider this passage:

“As for dining in love, I can think of a lunch at the Lafayette in New York, in the front cafe with the glass pushed back and the May air flowing almost visibly over the marble tabletops, and a waiter named Pons, and a bottle of Louis Martini’s Folle Blanche and moules-more-or-less-marinieres but delicious, and then a walk in new black-heeled shoes with white stitching on them beside a man I had just met and a week later was to marry, in spite of my obdurate resove never to marry again and my cynical recognition of his super-salesmanship.”

And consider that in the middle of that description of food and that pithy (and bitchy!) character summary, she mentions what shoes she was wearing. Now you see why.

So I had something melancholic and poetic planned out in my mind to post yesterday, including a quote from Roethke (“How much will the bones allow?”), and then Blogger was unavailable all day, finally forcing me to switch to the “new Blogger.” Stupid new Blogger. (Although the verbiage about it did make the following claim: “It’s like Battlestar Galactica with Lorne Greene and Battlestar Galactica with Edward James Olmos.”)

So yesterday was not the time for sad literary quotes, although I’m sure their time will come again soon. In the meantime, here’s something that’s looking like a sweater with the birthday yarn:
Oh yes, I am knitting like a fiend. And last night I made bread. Bread with kneading and two risings and everything. (Whenever there’s an involved baking project, you know there’s some serious shit going down.) It got me thinking about my pioneer skills: bread making, sweater knitting, alpaca wrangling, sock knitting, sewing, biscuit making, and horse riding (well, I knew how to once). I don’t know how good I’d be at setting bones or delivering babies, but I’m also developing a pioneer-like stoicism in the face of unpleasant circumstances. (At least, I think I am.)

With that said, here’s another picture of yarn!
Oh, how pretty.

No, not the book by Charles Frazier (although he was referencing these in a big way, I think), but the poems by crazy Buddhist poet and mountaineer Han Shan. And since yesterday was clear and cold with new snow on the mountains, I thought of some of them:

8.

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there’s been no rain
The pine sings, but there’s no wind.
Who can leap the word’s ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?

11.

Spring water in the green creek is clear
Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white
Silent knowledge – the spirit is enlightened of itself
Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness.

They’re all planned out. See? I’m working on the “Bluestocking” socks (well, sock) and I did all the math for the sweater with the birthday yarn (not pictured) last night. Those are the January projects.

Then I have this lovely shiny green and yellow yarn, which will be a purse. See the nice lining fabric beneath it? The colorway is called “Rachel Carson.” How can you not buy yarn to knit a purse named after one of the first environmentalists, I ask you.

Here’s some more Rachel Carson:

In the picture, there are two hanks of more subdued green yarn, bound to be armwarmers/gloves. And then that takes me through February. (At least, that’s how I’ve planned it. It will probably take me until the summer solstice to finish up, but no one can say I don’t have a goal).

Birthday kitty!

Birthday yarn (15 balls of it)!

Birthday shirt The Mama made for me!


Birthday kitty strikes again!

Birthday pie!


Birthday roses!

What a good birthday. Thank you, family. (And thank you, Axel, for posing so nicely.)

Why? Because it’s my birthday! And because I try to make this blog as educational as it is entertaining, here are a few other famous people also born today. Along with me.

J.R.R. Tolkein, the Hobbit guy
John Paul Jones, bassist for Led Zepplin
Michael Schumacher, Formula 1 fancy-pants race car driver

(That, of course, was the name of the play on which the film Casablanca was based.) However, it might be more accurate to title this “Everybody Comes To Ogden,” which is indeed what everybody did New Year’s Eve. Wait, are these the streets of Morocco? Is that Rick? Who’s the lady with the champage? (I always end up with the champagne. In every picture.) I hope we all had a Happy New Year, and that one of us actually said, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” during a toast.

1. I was driving off to see the cat and the house for the night and I saw something cross the road in front of me. I thought, “Wow, that’s a really big hunchbacked cat.” But it was, in fact, a raccoon. On I Street and Third Avenue. Lock down your pets!

2. I found a yarn store in West Jordan that has a really impressive yarn selection.

3. Ditto for a fabric store in Gardner Village, of all places. (Well, almost ditto. The fabric store had a nice selection of fabric.)

4. There was a line in the old movie Sabrina that I liked, spoken by Miss Audrey: “I thought I was all grown up. But I just got a new hairdo.”

Mostly, finishing small knitted projects:

A mostly-completed sock, also known as The Ninja Sock of Death.

A spy hat made of alpaca that gets black lint on your hair.

The last of the Christmas gift knititng. I like this pattern so much, I will make a purse like it come spring. (This is a cosmetic bag.)

Also, house- and cat-sitting without a laptop. (For the love, people–a little patience, please?)

And finally, making lists of what I’ve learned during this seemingly endless week of introspection:

1. I don’t want to live alone.
2. I like brightly-painted walls.
3. I like my job and the structure it provides.
4. Baking is soothing.
5. I really enjoy living ten minutes away from a walk in the foothills.

Come back tomorrow for MORE LISTS! Really!